hourly a total change in the Council, and that men like Clavering and Monson might be again joined to Francis, that some great avenger should arise from their ashes,—­“Exoriare, aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor,”—­and that a more severe investigation and an infinitely more full display would be made of his robbery than hitherto had been done.  He therefore began, in the agony of his guilt, to cast about for some device by which he might continue his offence, if possible, with impunity,—­and possibly make a merit of it.  He therefore first carefully perused the act of Parliament forbidding bribery, and his old covenant engaging him not to receive presents.  And here he was more successful than upon former occasions.  If ever an act was studiously and carefully framed to prevent bribery, it is that law of the 13th of the King, which he well observes admits no latitudes of construction, no subterfuge, no escape, no evasion.  Yet has he found a defence of his crimes even in the very provisions which were made for their prevention and their punishment.  Besides the penalty which belongs to every informer, the East India Company was invested with a fiction of property in all such bribes, in order to drag them with more facility out of the corrupt hands which held them.  The covenant, with an exception of one hundred pounds, and the act of Parliament, without any exception, declared that the Governor-General and Council should receive no presents for their own use.  He therefore concluded that the system of bribery and extortion might be clandestinely and safely carried on, provided the party taking the bribes had an inward intention and mental reservation that they should be privately applied to the Company’s service in any way the briber should think fit, and that on many occasions this would prove the best method of supply for the exigencies of their service.

He accordingly formed, or pretended to form, a private bribe exchequer, collateral with and independent of the Company’s public exchequer, though in some cases administered by those whom for his purposes he had placed in the regular official department.  It is no wonder that he has taken to himself an extraordinary degree of merit.  For surely such an invention of finance, I believe, never was heard of,—­an exchequer wherein extortion was the assessor, fraud the cashier, confusion the accountant, concealment the reporter, and oblivion the remembrancer:  in short, such as I believe no man, but one driven by guilt into frenzy, could ever have dreamed of.

He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers.  He is an eccentric book-keeper, a Pindaric accountant.  I have heard of “the poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling.”  Here was a revenue exacted from whom he pleased, at what times he pleased, in what proportions he pleased, through what persons he pleased, by what means he pleased, to be accounted for or not, at his discretion, and to be applied to