nd abject mind; and the effect of the crime seems to
end with the act. It looks to be no more than the corrupt transfer of
property from one person to another,--at worst a theft. But it will
appear in a very different light, when you regard the consideration for
which the bribe is given,--namely, that a Governor-General, claiming an
arbitrary power in himself, for that consideration delivers up the
properties, the liberties, and the lives of an whole people to the
arbitrary discretion of any wicked and rapacious person, who will be
sure to make good from their blood the purchase he has paid for his
power over them. It is possible that a man may pay a bribe merely to
redeem himself from some evil. It is bad, however, to live under a power
whose violence has no restraint except in its avarice. But no man ever
paid a bribe for a power to charge and tax others, but with a view to
oppress them. No man ever paid a bribe for the handling of the public
money, but to peculate from it. When once such offices become thus
privately and corruptly venal, the very worst men will be chosen (as Mr.
Hastings has in fact constantly chosen the very worst); because none but
those who do not scruple the use of any means are capable, consistently
with profit, to discharge at once the rigid demands of a severe public
revenue and the private bribes of a rapacious chief magistrate. Not only
the worst men will be thus chosen, but they will be restrained by no
dread whatsoever in the execution of their worst oppressions. Their
protection is sure. The authority that is to restrain, to control, to
punish them is previously engaged; he has his retaining fee for the
support of their crimes. Mr. Hastings never dared, because he could not,
arrest oppression in its course, without drying up the source of his own
corrupt emolument. Mr. Hastings never dared, after the fact, to punish
extortion in others, because he could not, without risking the discovery
of bribery in himself. The same corruption, the same oppression, and the
same impunity will reign through all the subordinate gradations.

A fair revenue may be collected without the aid of wicked, violent, and
unjust instruments. But when once the line of just and legal demand is
transgressed, such instruments are of absolute necessity; and they
comport themselves accordingly. When we know that men must be well paid
(and they ought to be well paid) for the performance of honorable duty,
can we think that