I am now to inform your Lordships, that, when he made these great discoveries to the Court of Directors, he never tells them who gave him the money, upon what occasion he received it, by what hands, or to what purposes he applied it.

When he can himself give no account of his motives, and even declares that he cannot assign any cause, I am authorized and required to find motives for him,—­corrupt motives for a corrupt act.  There is no one capital act of his administration that did not strongly imply corruption.  When a man is known to be free from all imputation of taking money, and it becomes an established part of his character, the errors or even crimes of his administration ought to be, and are in general, traced to other sources.  You know it is a maxim.  But once convict a man of bribery in any instance, and once by direct evidence, and you are furnished with a rule of irresistible presumption that every other irregular act by which unlawful gain may arise is done upon the same corrupt motive. Semel malus praesumitur semper malus. As for good acts candor, charity, justice oblige me not to assign evil motives, unless they serve some scandalous purpose or terminate in some manifest evil end, so justice, reason, and common sense compel me to suppose that wicked acts have been done upon motives correspondent to their nature:  otherwise I reverse all the principles of judgment which can guide the human mind, and accept even the symptoms, the marks and criteria of guilt, as presumptions of innocence.  One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.

His conduct upon these occasions may be thought irrational.  But, thank God, guilt was never a rational thing:  it distorts all the faculties of the mind; it perverts them; it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason; it puts him into confusion.  He has recourse to such miserable and absurd expedients for covering his guilt as all those who are used to sit in the seat of judgment know have been the cause of detection of half the villanies in the world.  To argue that these could not be his reasons, because they were not wise, sound, and substantial, would be to suppose, what is not true, that bad men were always discreet and able.  But I can very well from the circumstances discover motives which may affect a giddy, superficial, shattered, guilty, anxious, restless mind, full of the weak resources of fraud, craft, and intrigue, that might induce him to make these discoveries, and to make them in the manner he has done.  Not rational, and well-fitted for their purposes, I am very ready to admit.  For God forbid that guilt should ever leave a man the free, undisturbed use of his faculties!  For as guilt never rose from a true use of our rational faculties, so it is very frequently subversive of them.  God forbid that prudence, the first of all the virtues, as well as the supreme director of them all, should ever be employed in the service of any of the vices!  No:  it takes the lead, and is never found where justice does not accompany it; and if ever it is attempted to bring it into the service of the vices, it immediately subverts their cause.  It tends to their discovery, and, I hope and trust, finally to their utter ruin and destruction.