Those who are bountiful to crimes will be rigid to
merit and penurious to service. Their penury is even held out as a blind
and cover to their prodigality. The economy of injustice is to furnish
resources for the fund of corruption. Then they pay off their protection
to great crimes and great criminals by being inexorable to the paltry
frailties of little men; and these modern flagellants are sure, with a
rigid fidelity, to whip their own enormities on the vicarious back of
every small offender.
It is to draw your attention to economy of quite another order, it is to
animadvert on offences of a far different description, that my honorable
friend has brought before you the motion of this day. It is to
perpetuate the abuses which are subverting the fabric of your empire,
that the motion is opposed. It is, therefore, with reason (and if he has
power to carry himself through, I commend his prudence) that the right
honorable gentleman makes his stand at the very outset, and boldly
refuses all Parliamentary information. Let him admit but one step
towards inquiry, and he is undone. You must be ignorant, or he cannot be
safe. But before his curtain is let down, and the shades of eternal
night shall veil our Eastern dominions from our view, permit me, Sir, to
avail myself of the means which were furnished in anxious and
inquisitive times to demonstrate out of this single act of the present
minister what advantages you are to derive from permitting the greatest
concern of this nation to be separated from the cognizance, and exempted
even out of the competence, of Parliament.
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