The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 10 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
History
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 10 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
entitled to your confidence and trust." You will observe his cavalier
mode of expression. Instead of his exhibiting the rigor and severity of
an accountant and a book-keeper, you would think that he had been a
reader of sentimental letters; there is such an air of a novel running
through the whole, that it adds to the ridicule and nausea of it: it is
an oxymel of squills; there is something to strike you with horror for
the villany of it, something to strike you with contempt for the fraud
of it, and something to strike you with utter disgust for the vile and
bad taste with which all these base ingredients are assorted.
Your Lordships will see, when the account which is subjoined to this
unaccountable letter comes before you, that, though the Company had
desired to know the channels through which he got those sums, there is
not (except by a reference that appears in another place to one of the
articles) one single syllable of explanation given from one end to the
other, there is not the least glimpse of light thrown upon these
transactions. But we have since discovered from whom he got these
bribes; and your Lordships will be struck with horror, when you hear it.
I have already remarked to you, that, though this letter is dated upon
the 22d of May, it was not dispatched for Europe till December
following; and he gets Mr. Larkins, who was his agent and instrument in
falsifying the Company's accounts, to swear that this letter was written
upon the 22d of May, and that he had no opportunity to send it, but by
the "Lively" in December. On the 16th of that month he writes to the
Directors, and tells them that he is quite shocked to find he had no
earlier opportunity of making this discovery, which he thought himself
bound to make; though this discovery, respecting some articles of it,
had now been delayed nearly two years, and though it since appears that
there were many opportunities, and particularly by the "Resolution," of
sending it. He was much distressed, and found himself in an awkward
situation, from an apprehension that the Parliamentary inquiry, which he
knew was at this time in progress, might have forced from him this
notable discovery. He says, "I do not fear the consequences of any
Parliamentary process." Indeed, he needed not to fear any Parliamentary
inquiry, if it produced no further discovery than that which your
Lordships have in the letter of the 22d of May, and in the accounts
subjoined to it. He says, that "the delay is of no public consequence;
but it has produced a situation which, with respect to myself, I regard
as unfortunate, because it exposes me to the meanest imputation, from
the occasion which the late Parliamentary inquiries have since
furnished."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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