Burke Manuscript

Burke Manuscript: Page 286

Transcript

As to account sales, brokerage, commission, insurance, auction charges, freight and all the other ingenious modes of extracting money from the producers smally stocked pocket, it may be said that there is hardly one of the documents but could be treated as the High Court of Justice served the Manchester brokers for a great Indian firm. They had to furnish details, and refund every cent dishonestly charged or where charges and commissions had been divided, or imaginary charges made. That is a very valuable judgement. Puts false accounts on the basis of fraud. And a fraud is robbery. And for robbery people get jugged – and robbery time does not wipe out, and filing your shovel won’t help you. So, dear boys, go in and look up your old venerable records, compare your weights and heights, your outgoings and your incomings, and should you feel that by any possibility you can bring your obfuscated ideas to believe that Castles and Mansions have been built by robbing you, walk in dear boy to the magnificent counting house and ask a question. But don’t be bluffed – and then ask if they will kindly undergo the ordeal of disgorging the immense morsels they have swallowed, tempted by the haste for riches and the sleepiness of clients? Time is no get away. There can be no escape. The thing is inexorable as death. Throw up the sponge or take the consequences.

It is a peculiar position, is it not my Sage? An awkward situation, Philosopher. In fact it is a fix. It is painful and my bowels sympathise with the Fixee. I have looked up with such reverence to the wonderful genius that some men possessed in the accumulation of wealth and the display of luxury, and said to myself, what brains these men have and I none, that it will come upon me, when the decree of fate strikes as a personal grief. Now, sir, don’t interfere with me. No one is needed to assist me. Let me weep. My idols are going like smashed eggs, and awful to whisper – hold your nose – some of them very rotten eggs.

There is an Official in this City – now don’t get nervous – surely this can’t point at all of you – and this party has, for some years not alone by dividing auctioneer’s charges, but in other “ways that are