other, the mischief of the example is
infinite.

My Lords, when once a Governor-General receives bribes, he gives a
signal to universal pillage to all the inferior parts of the service.
The bridles upon hard-mouthed passion are removed; they are taken away;
they are broken. Fear and shame, the great guards to virtue next to
conscience, are gone. Shame! how can it exist?--it will soon blush away
its awkward sensibility. Shame, my Lords, cannot exist long, when it is
seen that crimes which naturally bring disgrace are attended with all
the outward symbols, characteristics, and rewards of honor and of
virtue,--when it is seen that high station, great rank, general
applause, vast wealth follow the commission of peculation and bribery.
Is it to be believed that men can long be ashamed of that which they see
to be the road to honor? As to fear, let a Governor-General once take
bribes, there is an end of all fear in the service. What have they to
fear? Is it the man whose example they follow that is to bring them
before a tribunal for their punishment? Can he open any inquiry? He
cannot: he that opens a channel of inquiry under these circumstances
opens a high-road to his own detection. Can he make any laws to prevent
it? None: for he can make no laws to restrain that practice without the
breach of his own laws immediately in his own conduct. If we once can
admit, for a single instant, in a Governor-General, a principle, however
defended, upon any pretence whatever, to receive bribes in consequence
of his office, there is an end of all virtue, an end of the laws, and no
hope left in the supreme justice of the country. We are sensible of all
these difficulties; we have felt them; and perhaps it has required no
small degree of exertion for us to get the better of these difficulties
which are thrown in our way by a Governor-General accepting bribes, and
thereby screening and protecting the whole service in such iniquitous
proceedings.

With regard to this matter, we are to state to your Lordships, in order
to bring it fully and distinctly before you, what the nature of this
distemper of bribery is in the Indian government. We are to state what
the laws and rules are which have been opposed to prevent it, and the
utter insufficiency of all that have been proposed: to state the
grievance, the instructions of the Company and government, the acts of
Parliament, the constructions upon the acts of Parliament. We are to
state to your