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"Shut up!" roared the sergeant. "If," said the Philosopher, "these people steal both from from sheep and from men, if their peculations range from wool to money, I do not see how they can avoid stealing from each other, and consequently, if anywhere, it is amongst jackdaws one should look for the growth of a police force, but there is no such force in existence.
Peel noticed that while 'the pension list of Great Britain was limited to 90,000l. per annum, the pension list of Ireland may amount to 80,000l. a year; and he found almost all Irish patronage still employed for political purposes, and almost every office honeycombed with abuses and peculations.
The Chairman of this committee, Representative C. H. Van Wyck, of New York, in reporting to the House of Representatives on February 23, 1863, made these opening remarks: "In the early history of the war, it was claimed that frauds and peculations were unavoidable; that the cupidity of the avaricious would take advantage of the necessities of the nation, and for a time must revel and grow rich amidst the groans and griefs of the people; that pressing wants must yield to the extortion of the base; that when the capital was threatened, railroad communication cut off, the most exorbitant prices could safely be demanded for steam and sailing vessels; that when our arsenals had been robbed of arms, gold could not be weighed against cannon and muskets; that the Government must be excused if it suffered itself to be overreached.
If any one entertain doubts on that score, let him look up the record on grants of thousands of acres to favorites of the Family Compact; on peculations of public funds in Quebec by irresponsible executives; on mistrials of disorders in the Fur Country, when North-Wester and Hudson's Bay traders cut each other's throats; on the constant bicker and bark between Protestant Ontario and Catholic Quebec, which kept the country rent by religious dissensions when men should have been empire-building.
"Certainly not," assented the doctor, inwardly thinking that it was much less surprising than it would have been in the case of one of his own girls. "In the second place, he is always harping upon the subject of Jacobs and his peculations an old subject, which he might well let rest.
In all this there was of course room for vast deception, but the Emperor was quite aware of what was going on, and took a philosophic view of the matter as an inevitable part of his system. Granvelle grew enormously rich under his eye by trading on the imperial favor and sparing his majesty much trouble. Charles saw it all, ridiculed his peculations, but called him his "bed of down."
The engineer had made his inspection the excuse for a few years of not disagreeable travel, during which time the company had exploded, its chief financier having cut his throat when his peculations came out to the public. "Are you trying, then, to escape from one of your greatest possible duties and one of your greatest possible pleasures?
On this particular evening he had in prospect a little dinner at Philippe's not uncheered by the smiles of venal beauty and had just completed a careful toilette. He was above the small peculations of his order; indeed, had he been inclined to plunder his late masters wardrobe, the absurd disproportion in their size would have saved him from that vulgar temptation.
In these famous philippics, he fearlessly exposed the peculations, the misrule, the oppression, and the inhuman heartlessness of the Company's servants, speeches which extorted admiration, while they humiliated and chastised.
For the truth of these accounts it is not necessary to believe that the English government was intentionally brutal; but it was neglectful and indifferent, and those who had prisoners in charge felt assured that no sympathy for rebels would induce an investigation into peculations or unfeeling behavior.
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