He has recourse to such miserable and absurd expedients for covering his guilt as all those who are used to sit in the seat of judgment know have been the cause of detection of half the villanies in the world.
Edmund Burke
The Public Record
Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, and politician who is widely credited as the founder of the cultural and political philosophy of conservatism. Regarded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers and political writers of the 18th century, Burke spent the majority of his career in Great Britain and was elected as a member of Parliament (MP) from 1766 to 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party. His writings played a significant role in influencing public views and opinions in both Great Britain and France following the French Revolution in 1789, and he remains a major figure in modern conservative circles.
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But, thank God, guilt was never a rational thing: it distorts all the faculties of the mind; it perverts them; it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason; it puts him into confusion.
One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.
But once convict a man of bribery in any instance, and once by direct evidence, and you are furnished with a rule of irresistible presumption that every other irregular act by which unlawful gain may arise is done upon the same corrupt…
When a man is known to be free from all imputation of taking money, and it becomes an established part of his character, the errors or even crimes of his administration ought to be, and are in general, traced to other sources.
There is no one capital act of his administration that did not strongly imply corruption.
When he can himself give no account of his motives, and even declares that he cannot assign any cause, I am authorized and required to find motives for him,--corrupt motives for a corrupt act.
He goes the full length of that position, and turns his private peculation into a public good.
It has been said that private vices are public benefits.
It has been said of an ambassador, that he is a person employed to tell lies for the advantage of the court that sends him.
He claims glory and renown from that by which every other person since the beginning of time has been dishonored and disgraced.
He is the first, but, if we do not take good care, he will not be the last, that has established the corruption of the supreme magistrate among the settled resources of the state; and he leaves this principle as a bountiful donation, as…
No: I am a great inventive genius, who have gone out of all the ordinary roads of finance, have made great discoveries in the unknown regions of that science, and have for the first time established the corruption of the supreme magistrate…
Before, he was accused as a peculator; he did not deny the fact; he did not refund the money; he fought it off; he stood upon the defensive, and used all the means in his power to prevent the inquiry.
Now here is a new system of bribery, contrary to law, very ingenious in the contrivance, but, I believe, as unlikely to produce its intended effect upon the mind of man as any pretence that was ever used.
Because wherever you find a concealment you make a discovery.
He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers.
The covenant, with an exception of one hundred pounds, and the act of Parliament, without any exception, declared that the Governor-General and Council should receive no presents for their own use.
Yet has he found a defence of his crimes even in the very provisions which were made for their prevention and their punishment.
If ever an act was studiously and carefully framed to prevent bribery, it is that law of the 13th of the King, which he well observes admits no latitudes of construction, no subterfuge, no escape, no evasion.
I am not bound to find order and consistency in guilt: it is the reign of disorder.
There are many other bribes which we charge him with having received during this first period, before an improving conversation and close virtuous connection with great lawyers had taught him how to practise bribes in such a manner as to…
The bribes which I have hitherto brought before your Lordships belong to the first period of his bribery, before he thought of the doctrine on which he has since defended it.
There is no collateral testimony: Middleton knew nothing of it; Anderson knew nothing of it; it was not directly communicated to the faithful Larkins or the trusty Croftes;--which proves, indeed, the facility of concealment.
But it happens here, very singularly, that this sum, which his fears of discovery by others obliged him to discover himself, happens to be one of those of which no trace whatsoever appears, except merely from the operation of his own…
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