strongly rumoured that there had been foul play, peculation, even
forgery. Duncombe threw the most serious imputations on the Board
of Treasury, and pretended that he had been put out of his office
only because he was too shrewd to be deceived, and too honest to
join in deceiving the public. Tories and malecontent Whigs,
elated by the hope that
Montague might be convicted of malversation, eagerly called for
inquiry. An inquiry was instituted; but the result not only
disappointed but utterly confounded the accusers. The persecuted
minister obtained both a complete acquittal, and a signal
revenge. Circumstances were discovered which seemed to indicate
that Duncombe himself was not blameless. The clue was followed;
he was severely cross-examined; he lost his head; made one
unguarded admission after another, and was at length compelled to
confess, on the floor of the House, that he had been guilty of an
infamous fraud, which, but for his own confession, it would have
been scarcely possible to bring home to him. He had been ordered
by the Commissioners of the Excise to pay ten thousand pounds
into the Exchequer for the public service. He had in his hands,
as cashier, more than double that sum in good milled silver. With
some of this money he bought Exchequer Bills which were then at a
considerable discount; he paid those bills in; and he pocketed
the discount, which amounted to about four hundred pounds. Nor
was this all. In order to make it appear that the depreciated
paper, which he had fraudulently substituted for silver, had been
received by him in payment of taxes, he had employed a knavish
Jew to forge endorsements of names, some real and some imaginary.
This scandalous story, wrung out of his own lips, was heard by
the opposition with consternation and shame, by the ministers and
their friends with vindictive exultation. It was resolved,