My Lords, when once a Governor-General receives bribes, he gives a signal to universal pillage to all the inferior parts of the service. The bridles upon hard-mouthed passion are removed; they are taken away; they are broken. Fear and shame, the great guards to virtue next to conscience, are gone. Shame! how can it exist?--it will soon blush away its awkward sensibility. Shame, my Lords, cannot exist long, when it is seen that crimes which naturally bring disgrace are attended with all the outward symbols, characteristics, and rewards of honor and of virtue,--when it is seen that high station, great rank, general applause, vast wealth follow the commission of peculation and bribery. Is it to be believed that men can long be ashamed of that which they see to be the road to honor? As to fear, let a Governor-General once take bribes, there is an end of all fear in the service. What have they to fear? Is it the man whose example they follow that is to bring them before a tribunal for their punishment? Can he open any inquiry? He cannot: he that opens a channel of inquiry under these circumstances opens a high-road to his own detection. Can he make any laws to prevent it? None: for he can make no laws to restrain that practice without the breach of his own laws immediately in his own conduct. If we once can admit, for a single instant, in a Governor-General, a principle, however defended, upon any pretence whatever, to receive bribes in consequence of his office, there is an end of all virtue, an end of the laws, and no hope left in the supreme justice of the country. We are sensible of all these difficulties; we have felt them; and perhaps it has required no small degree of exertion for us to get the better of these difficulties which are thrown in our way by a Governor-General accepting bribes, and thereby screening and protecting the whole service in such iniquitous proceedings.