The legislature, in declaring all presents to be the property of the
Company, could not consider corruption, extortion, and fraud as any part
of their resources. The property in such presents was declared to be
theirs, not as a fund for their benefit, but in order to found a legal
title to a civil suit. It was declared theirs, to facilitate the
recovery out of corrupt and oppressive hands of money illegally taken;
but this legal fiction of property could not nor ought by the
legislature to be considered in any other light than as a trust held by
them for those who suffered the injury. Upon any other construction, the
Company would have a right, first, to extract money from the subjects or
dependants of this kingdom committed to their care, by means of
particular conventions, or by taxes, by rents, and by monopolies; and
when they had exhausted every contrivance of public imposition, then
they were to be at liberty to let loose upon the people all their
servants, from the highest rank to the lowest, to prey upon them at
pleasure, and to draw, by personal and official authority, by influence,
venality, and terror, whatever was left to them,--and that all this was
justified, provided the product was paid into the Company's exchequer.
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