if honestly carried into effect, would have been
unobjectionable. But it was strongly rumoured that there had been
foul play, peculation, even forgery. Duncombe threw the most serious
imputations on the Board of Treasury, and pretended that he had been put
out of his office only because he was too shrewd to be deceived, and too
honest to join in deceiving the public. Tories and malecontent Whigs,
elated by the hope that Montague might be convicted of malversation,
eagerly called for inquiry. An inquiry was instituted; but the
result not only disappointed but utterly confounded the accusers. The
persecuted minister obtained both a complete acquittal, and a signal
revenge. Circumstances were discovered which seemed to indicate that
Duncombe himself was not blameless. The clue was followed; he was
severely cross-examined; he lost his head; made one unguarded admission
after another, and was at length compelled to confess, on the floor of
the House, that he had been guilty of an infamous fraud, which, but for
his own confession, it would have been scarcely possible to bring home
to him. He had been ordered by the Commissioners of the Excise to pay
ten thousand pounds into the Exchequer for the public service. He had in
his hands, as cashier, more than double that sum in good milled silver.
With some of this money he bought Exchequer Bills which were then at
a considerable discount; he paid those bills in; and he pocketed the
discount, which amounted to about four hundred pounds. Nor was this
all. In order to make it appear that the depreciated paper, which he had
fraudulently substituted for silver, had been received by him in payment
of taxes, he had employed a knavish Jew to forge endorsements of names,
some real and some imaginary. This scandalous story, wrung out of his
own lips, was heard by the opposition with consternation and shame,
by the ministers and their friends with vindictive exultation. It was
resolved, without any division, that he should be sent to the Tower,
that he should be kept close prisoner there, that he should be expelled
from the House. Whether any further punishment could be inflicted on him
was a perplexing question. The English law touching forgery became, at a
later period, barbarously severe; but, in 1698, it was absurdly lax. The
prisoner's offence was certainly not a felony; and lawyers apprehended
that there would be much difficulty in convicting him even of a
misdemeanour. But a recent pre