Parliament, without any exception, declared that the Governor-General and Council should receive no presents _for their own use_. He therefore concluded that the system of bribery and extortion might be clandestinely and safely carried on, provided the party taking the bribes had an inward intention and mental reservation that they should be privately applied to the Company's service in any way the briber should think fit, and that on many occasions this would prove the best method of supply for the exigencies of their service. He accordingly formed, or pretended to form, a private bribe exchequer, collateral with and independent of the Company's public exchequer, though in some cases administered by those whom for his purposes he had placed in the regular official department. It is no wonder that he has taken to himself an extraordinary degree of merit. For surely such an invention of finance, I believe, never was heard of,--an exchequer wherein extortion was the assessor, fraud the cashier, confusion the accountant, concealment the reporter, and oblivion the remembrancer: in short, such as I believe no man, but one driven by guilt into frenzy, could ever have dreamed of. He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers. He is an eccentric book-keeper, a Pindaric accountant. I have heard of "the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling." Here was a revenue exacted from whom he pleased, at what times he pleased, in what proportions he pleased, through what persons he pleased, by what means he pleased, to be accounted for or not, at his discretion, and to be applied to what service he thought proper. I do believe your Lordships stand astonished at this scheme; and indeed I should be very loath to venture to state such a scheme at all, however I might have credited it myself, to any sober ears, if, in his defence before the House of Commons, and before the Lords, he had not directly admitted the fact of taking the bribes or forbidden presents, and had not in those defences, and much more fully in his correspondence with the Directors, admitted the fact, and justified it upon these very principles.