Presents to any considerable value were justly reputed by the legislature, not as marks of attention and respect, but as bribes or extortions, for which either the beneficial and gratuitous duties of government were sold, or they were the price paid for acts of partiality, or, finally, they were sums of money extorted from the givers by the terrors of power. Against the system of presents, therefore, the new commission was in general opinion particularly pointed. In the commencement of reformation, at a period when a rapacious conquest had overpowered and succeeded to a corrupt government, an act of indemnity might have been thought advisable; perhaps a new account ought to have been opened; all retrospect ought to have been forbidden, at least to certain periods. If this had not been thought advisable, none in the higher departments of a suspected and decried government ought to have been kept in their posts, until an examination had rendered their proceedings clear, or until length of time had obliterated, by an even course of irreproachable conduct, the errors which so naturally grow out of a new power. But the policy adopted was different: it was to begin with _examples_. The cry against the abuses was strong and vehement throughout the whole nation, and the practice of presents was represented to be as general as it was mischievous. In such a case, indeed in any case, it seemed not to be a measure the most provident, without a great deal of previous inquiry, to place two persons, who from their situation must be the most exposed to such imputations, in the commission which was to inquire into their own conduct,--much less to place one of them at the head of that commission, and with a casting vote in case of an equality. The persons who could not be liable to that charge were, indeed, three to two; but any accidental difference of opinion, the death of any one of them or his occasional absence or sickness, threw the whole power into the hands of the other two, who were Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell, one the President, and the other high in the Council of that establishment on which the reform was to operate. Thus those who were liable to process as delinquents were in effect set over the reformers; and that did actually happen which might be expected to happen from so preposterous an arrangement: a stop was soon put to all inquiries into the capital abuses.