If this chain of circumstances does not lead you necessarily to conclude that the minister has paid to the avarice of Benfield the services done by Benfield's connections to his ambition, I do not know anything short of the confession of the party that can persuade you of his guilt.
Burke challenges the audience to recognize the implications of a minister's actions, suggesting that circumstantial evidence can reveal guilt even without a confession.
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More from Edmund Burke
If kings who did not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become of the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of Right? of the act of Habeas Corpus?
Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of supporting itself by the then unnecessary support of any argument; but this seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and printed.
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