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
My Lords, you will observe in this most astonishing account which he
gives here, that several of these sums he meant to conceal forever, even
from the knowledge of the Directors. Look back to his letter of 22d May,
1782, and his letter of the 16th of December, and in them he tells you
that he might have concealed them, but that he was resolved not to
conceal them; that he thought it highly dishonorable so to do; that his
conscience would have been wounded, if he had done it; and that he was
afraid it would be thought that this discovery was brought from him in
consequence of the Parliamentary inquiries. Here he says of a discovery
which he values himself upon making voluntarily, that he is afraid it
should be attributed to arise from motives of fear. Now, at last, he
tells you, from Cheltenham, at a time when he had just cause to dread
the strict account to which he is called this day, first, that he cannot
tell whether any one motive which he assigns, either in this letter or
in the former, were his real motive or not; that he does not know
whether he has not invented them since, in consequence of a train of
meditation upon what he might have done or might have said; and, lastly,
he says, contrary to all his former declarations, "that he had never
meant nor could give the Directors the least notice of them at all, as
they had answered his purpose, and he had dismissed them from his
remembrance." "I intended," he says, "always to keep them secret, though
I have declared to you solemnly, over and over again, that I did not. I
do not care how you discovered them; I have forgotten them; I have
dismissed them from my remembrance." Is this the way in which money is
to be received and accounted for?
He then proceeds thus:--"But when fortune threw a sum of money in my way
of a magnitude which could not be concealed, and the peculiar delicacy
of my situation at the time I received it made me more circumspect of
appearances, I chose to apprise my employers of it, which I did hastily
and generally: hastily, perhaps, to prevent the vigilance and activity
of secret calumny; and generally, because I knew not the exact amount of
which I was in the receipt, but not in the full possession. I promised
to acquaint them with the result as soon as I should be in possession of
it; and, in the performance of my promise, I thought it consistent with
it to add to the amount all the former appropriations of the same kind:
my good genius then suggesting to me, with a spirit of caution which
might have spared me the trouble of this apology, had I universally
attended to it, that, if I had suppressed them, and they were afterwards
known, I might be asked what were my motives for withholding a part of
these receipts from the knowledge of the Court of Directors and
informing them of the rest, it being my wish to clear up every doubt."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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