A GREAT man to quote Shakespeare, he was. And on the day of his going from power, if I remember rightly, he quoted from Othello.
Soft you. a word or two before you go.
I have atone the State some service, and they know't.
Within the same speech appear the lines: I pray you, in your letters.
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am nothing extenuate.
So we should "nothing extenuate" when we look at this week's instalment of the Dunnes Stores tribunal. The facts have yet to be tied down.
For the moment, we're dealing in probabilities. Some Pounds 1.3 million was probably paid into an account by one rich man to help another rich man who, at the time was Taoiseach and a bit short of cash.
As Taoiseach, the man brought in tough money-saving measures, because the nation must be taught fiscal manners must learn to live within its budget. The tough-cuts made by the Taoiseach were effective and painful.
In almost every family, for example there's someone who recalls an unsatisfactory encounter with the health service at the time which ended with a shrug on the part of the service provider and the invocation of the all pervasive phrase "cutbacks," you know.
On the other side of the cutback equation, the gentle GP from Carrickmacross found himself picketed and pilloried as Dr Death, and bore it uncomplainingly, convinced of the necessity to get the economy straight, to live within our resources to follow the lean, mean and rigorous line laid down by the leader.
It would have been symmetrical if this lean, mean rigour had applied to the leader's private finances, too.
If, for example, he had sold off a few acres or divested himself of a collection of great wines or paintings. If the situation was bad enough, there was always the option of putting the big house on the market and buying a bungalow which would be so much easier to heat than rooms with those high Gandon ceilings.
Instead, it seems, his prescription for the State's troubled finances differed significantly from his prescription for his own troubled finances.
Emerging from what has been presented to the tribunal is the strongly emphasised probability that the man at the receiving end of the Ansbacher account did not know the names of those who put money into the account.
The inference we should draw, evidently, is that it's perfectly all right to have access to a multi-million pound bank account as long as you don't know who's putting money into it.
That way the recipient stays pure as a snowdrop. He's only receiving charity. Charity with no strings attached. Sure if you don't know who's given you the money, you can't get grateful and want to repay it in some way.
Therefore, as a legislator, nobody could ever accuse you of being biased in favour of an individuaI or company.
There's a mad logic to it. A logic that does rather ignore the reality that at any time the middle man who knows the donors' names might say to the recipient as the latter cogitates before making a significant legislative decision: "I'm sure you know that one of the interested parties (name) is a friend/has been helpful?"
Credulity is stretched by the possibility that the middleman might be aware of the legislator planning laws that would damage the interests of the donor and not let a peep out of him to protect the donor. It might be done in a way which carefully compromised nobody.
It might even be done without being asked for. But I cannot imagine it not being done.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said the rich are different. This week proves it. Those of us who are not rich would think that if you give money or financial advantage to a TD, then all you have to do, when you want something like designated status for a project, is lift the phone and ask the TD to get a few of his party to see the issue in the right light.
However, that would be wrong. This week, it's been revealed: you don't even have to make the phone call.
The rich are not only different, they are portrayed by Michael Lowry this week - a bit helpless, too. Helplessness seems to be easy to learn when money is the teacher.
Lowry wanted to pay his taxes and wanted an unwoolly payment method, hut circumstances just forced him to go along with the status quo.
MR JUSTICE McCracken has indicated that he is not going to widen the terms of reference of tribunal. Which is good news and bad news. The good news is that the thing will not be dissipated by irrelevant extra detail. I would not wish distractions to get in the way of our noting the fact that only one politician benefited from the Ansbacher bank account.
The bad news implicit in keeping to the original terms of reference is that the tribunal is unlikely to remove the unjustified taint afflicting the majority of politicians who go about their work straightforwardly and who live on their salaries without bribes, charity or any ether extras.
Because of the large sums and the sophistication of the money-shifting operations revealed by the tribunal, many people are convinced politics is full of wide boys, brown paper bags and dubious decisions.
The damage to the innocent is incalculable. Before the tribunal, we were told politicians were in the ha'penny place in the recipients List maintained by Ben Dunne and that members of other professional groups, such as public officials in planning and other areas, would be "outed" as receiving money.
So far, that hasn't happened. Only politicians have been tarred.
It would be unfortunate if the result of the tribunal was the spreading of vague venality over all politicians, when the vast majority are straight professionals who read the tribunal reports with a frustrating disbelief which matches that of the public.