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"'Bad business this, Sir, says he; 'never had such a scene in my house before, Sir; have had great difficulty to prevent my sarvants takin' the law of you. "'Ah, sais I to myself, 'I see how the cat jumps; here's a little tid bit of extortion now; but you won't find that no go, I don't think. "'You will have to satisfy them, Sir, says he, 'or take the consequences.
All exhortations on this head are thrown away, and after listening to them they will the very next day submit to extortion as quietly as before. How could representative institutions be expected to work under such conditions? They would have lacked the very foundation upon which alone they can firmly rest: respect for law, and public co-operation in the enforcement of it.
When he becomes wearied of my perverseness and extortion, I will dismiss him, and seek another victim. Those with whom I shall thus have to deal, will be what the world calls respectable men husbands, fathers perhaps professedly pious men and clergymen who would make any sacrifice sooner than have their amours exposed to their wives, families, and society generally.
Nor was extortion the only advantage which the Irish deputies obtained from their office. They prosecuted their private feuds with the revenues of the state. They connived at the crimes of any chieftain who would join their faction.
They began with the Fleet-prison, which they visited in a body; there they found sir William Rich, baronet, loaded with irons, by order of Bambridge the warden, to whom he had given some slight cause of offence. They made a discovery of many inhuman barbarities which had been committed by that ruffian, and detected the most iniquitous scenes of fraud, villany, and extortion.
In this it is stated that the warden had "let and set to farm the victualling and lodging of all the house and prison of the Fleet to one John Harvey, and the other profits of the said Fleet he had let to one Thomas Newport, the deputy there under the warden; and these being very poor men, having neither land nor any trade to live by, nor any certain wages of the said warden, and being also greedy of gain, did live by bribing and extortion.
In such matters a person can only trust to the intervention of good spirits; if, therefore, you will permit this unworthy individual to wear, while making the venture, the ring which he perceives upon your finger, and which he recognizes as a very powerful charm against evil, misunderstandings, and extortion, he will go without fear."
A tyrant or sensualist who has been deprived of the power he had abused, and, instead of punishment, is supported in as great wealth and splendor as he ever enjoyed; a knot of privileged landholders, who demand that the state should relinquish to them its reserved right to a rent from their lands, or who resent as a wrong any attempt to protect the masses from their extortion these have no difficulty in procuring interested or sentimental advocacy in the British Parliament and press.
Can anyone fail to see that it was designed to raise in the reader's mind the question, whether, at this time, that is to say, in 1828, South Carolina has any collision with the king's ministers, any oppression, or extortion, to fear from England? whether, in short, England is not as naturally the friend of South Carolina as New England, with her navigation interests springing up in envious rivalry of England?
For a time venality and extortion were unknown, and since that period they have never been able to regain their old force. At the present moment it cannot be said that the administration is immaculate, but it is incomparably purer than it was in old times.
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