" Now here is a man who has given it in a
sworn narrative, that he did not intend to have a farthing less. Why?
"Because I should have menaced and done as in former times has been
done,--made great and violent demands which I reduce afterwards for my
own corrupt purposes." Yet he tells you in the course of the same
defence, but in another paper, that he had no fixed plan, that he did
not know whether he should exact a fine at all, or what should be his
mode of executing it.
My Lords, what shall we say to this man, who declares that it would be a
proof of corruption not to exact the full sum which he had threatened to
exact, but who, finding that this doctrine would press hard upon him,
and be considered as a proof of cruelty and injustice, turns round and
declares he had no intention of exacting anything? What shall we say to
a man who thus reserves his determination, who threatens to sell a
tributary prince to a tyrant, and cannot decide whether he should take
from him his forts and pillage him of all he had, whether he should
raise 500,000_l._ upon him, whether he should accept the 220,000_l._
offered, (which, by the way, we never knew of till long after the whole
transaction,) whether he should do any or all of those things, and then,
by his own account, going up to Benares without having resolved anything
upon this important subject?
My Lords, I will now assume the hypothesis that he at last discovered
sufficient proof of rebellious practices; still even this gave him no
right to adduce such rebellion in justification of resolutions which he
had taken, of acts which he had done, before he knew anything of its
existence.
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