He goes on:—"I will now endeavor to reply to the different questions which have been stated to me, in as explicit a manner as I am able. To such information as I can give the Honorable Court is fully entitled; and where that shall prove defective, I will point out the only means by which it may be rendered more complete."

In order that your Lordships may thoroughly enter into the spirit of this letter, I must request that you will observe how handsomely and kindly these tools of Directors have expressed themselves to him, and that even their baseness and subserviency to him were not able to draw from him anything that could be satisfactory to his enemies: for as to these his friends, he cares but little about satisfying them, though they call upon him in consequence of his own promise; and this he calls a reprehension. They thus express themselves:—"Although it is not our intention to express any doubt of the integrity of the Governor-General,—on the contrary, after having received the presents, we cannot avoid expressing our approbation of his conduct in bringing them to the credit of the Company,—yet we must confess the statement of those transactions appears to us in many points so unintelligible, that we feel ourselves under the necessity of calling on the Governor-General for an explanation, agreeable to his promise voluntarily made to us. We therefore desire to be informed of the different periods when each sum was received, and what were the Governor-General's motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the Council and of the Court of Directors, and what were his reasons for taking bonds for part of these sums and paying other sums into the treasury as deposits upon his own account." Such is their demand, and this is what his memory furnishes as nothing but a reprehension.

He then proceeds:—"First, I believe I can affirm with certainty that the several sums mentioned in the account transmitted with my letter above mentioned were received at or within a very few days of the dates which are affixed to them in the account. But as this contains only the gross sums, and each of these was received in different payments, though at no great distance of time, I cannot therefore assign a great degree of accuracy to the account."—Your Lordships see, that, after all, he declares he cannot make his account accurate. He further adds, "Perhaps the Honorable Court will judge this sufficient"—that is, this explanation, namely, that he can give none—"for any purpose to which their inquiry was directed; but if it should not be so, I will beg leave to refer, for a more minute information, and for the means of making any investigation which they may think it proper to direct, respecting the particulars of this transaction, to Mr. Larkins, your accountant-general, who was privy to every process of it, and possesses, as I believe, the original paper, which contained the only account that I ever kept of it."

Here is a man who of his bribe accounts cannot give an account in the country where they are carried on. When you call upon him in Bengal, he cannot give the account, because he is in Bengal; when he comes to England, he cannot give the account here, because his accounts are left in Bengal. Again, he keeps no accounts himself, but his accounts are in Bengal, in the hands of somebody else: to him he refers, and we shall see what that reference produced.

"In this, each receipt was, as I recollect, specifically inserted, with the name of the person by whom it was made; and I shall write to him to desire that he will furnish you with the paper itself, if it is still in being and in his hands, or with whatever he can distinctly recollect concerning it."—Here are accounts kept for the Company, and yet he does not know whether they are in existence anywhere.

"For my motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the Council or of the Court of Directors, and for taking bonds for part of these sums, and paying others into the treasury as deposits on my own account, I have generally accounted in my letter to the Honorable the Court of Directors of the 22d of May, 1782,—namely, that I either chose to conceal the first receipts from public curiosity by receiving bonds for the amount, or possibly acted without any studied design which my memory at that distance of time could verify, and that I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest. It will not be expected that I should be able to give a more correct explanation of my intentions after a lapse of three years, having declared at the time that many particulars had escaped my remembrance; neither shall I attempt to add more than the clearer affirmation of the facts implied in that report of them, and such inferences as necessarily or with a strong probability follow them."

You have heard of that Oriental figure called, in the banian language, a painche, in English, a screw. It is a puzzled and studied involution of a period, framed in order to prevent the discovery of truth and the detection of fraud; and surely it cannot be better exemplified than in this sentence: "Neither shall I attempt to add more than the clearer affirmation of the facts implied in that report of them, and such inferences as necessarily or with a strong probability follow them." Observe, that he says, not facts stated, but facts implied in the report. And of what was this to be a report? Of things which the Directors declared they did not understand. And then the inferences which are to follow these implied facts are to follow them—But how? With a strong probability. If you have a mind to study this Oriental figure of rhetoric, the painche, here it is for you in its most complete perfection. No rhetorician ever gave an example of any figure of oratory that can match this.

But let us endeavor to unravel the whole passage. First he states, that, in May, 1782, he had forgotten his motives for falsifying the Company's accounts; but he affirms the facts contained in the report, and afterwards, very rationally, draws such inferences as necessarily or with a strong probability follow them. And if I understand it at all, which God knows I no more pretend to do than Don Quixote did those sentences of lovers in romance-writers of which he said it made him run mad to attempt to discover the meaning, the inference is, "Why do you call upon me for accounts now, three years after the time when I could not give you them? I cannot give them you. And as to the papers relating to them, I do not know whether they exist; and if they do, perhaps you may learn something from them, perhaps you may not: I will write to Mr. Larkins for those papers, if you please." Now, comparing this with his other accounts, you will see what a monstrous scheme he has laid of fraud and concealment to cover his peculation. He tells them,—"I have said that the three first sums of the account were paid into the Company's treasury without passing through my hands. The second of these was forced into notice by its destination and application to the expense of a detachment which was formed and employed against Mahdajee Sindia, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Camac, as I particularly apprised the Court of Directors in my letter of the 29th December [November?], 1780." He does not yet tell the Directors from whom he received it: we have found it out by other collateral means.—"The other two were certainly not intended, when I received them, to be made public, though intended for public service, and actually applied to it. The exigencies of government were at that time my own, and every pressure upon it rested with its full weight upon my mind. Wherever I could find allowable means of relieving those wants, I eagerly seized them."—Allowable means of receiving bribes! for such I shall prove them to be in the particular instances.—"But neither could it occur to me as necessary to state on our Proceedings every little aid that I could thus procure; nor do I know how I could have stated it without appearing to court favor by an ostentation which I disdained, nor without the chance of exciting the jealousy of my colleagues by the constructive assertion of a separate and unparticipated merit, derived from the influence of my station, to which they might have had an equal claim."

Now we see, that, after hammering his brains for many years, he does find out his motive, which he could not verify at the time,—namely, that, if he let his colleagues know that he was receiving bribes, and gaining the glory of receiving them, they might take it into their heads likewise to have their share in the same glory, as they were joined in the same commission, enjoyed the same powers, and were subject to the same restrictions. It was, indeed, scandalous in Mr. Hastings, not behaving like a good, fair colleague in office, not to let them know that he was going on in this career of receiving bribes, and to deprive them of their share in the glory of it: but they were grovelling creatures, who thought that keeping clean hands was some virtue.—"Well, but you have applied some of these bribes to your own benefit: why did you give no account of those bribes?" "I did not," he says, "because it might have excited the envy of my colleagues." To be sure, if he was receiving bribes for his own benefit, and they not receiving such bribes, and if they had a liking to that kind of traffic, it is a good ground of envy, that a matter which ought to be in common among them should be confined to Mr. Hastings, and he therefore did well to conceal it; and on the other hand, if we suppose him to have taken them, as he pretends, for the Company's use, in order not to excite a jealousy in his colleagues for being left out of this meritorious service, to which they had an equal claim, he did well to take bonds for what ought to be brought to the Company's account. These are reasons applicable to his colleagues, who sat with him at the same board,—Mr. Macpherson, Mr. Stables, Mr. Wheler, General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis: he was afraid of exciting their envy or their jealousy.

You will next see another reason, and an extraordinary one it is, which he gives for concealing these bribes from his inferiors. But I must first tell your Lordships, what, till the proof is brought before you, you will take on credit,—indeed, it is on his credit,—that, when he formed the Committee of Revenue, he bound them by a solemn oath, "not, under any name or pretence whatever, to take from any zemindar, farmer, person concerned in the revenue, or any other, any gift, gratuity, allowance, or reward whatever, or anything beyond their salary"; and this is the oath to which he alludes. Now his reason for concealing his bribes from his inferiors, this Committee, under these false and fraudulent bonds, he states thus:—"I should have deemed it particularly dishonorable to receive for my own use money tendered by men of a certain class, from whom I had interdicted the receipt of presents to my inferiors, and bound them by oath not to receive them: I was therefore more than ordinarily cautious to avoid the suspicion of it, which would scarcely have failed to light upon me, had I suffered the money to be brought to my own house, or that of any person known to be in trust for me."

My Lords, here he comes before you, avowing that he knew the practice of taking money from these people was a thing dishonorable in itself. "I should have deemed it particularly dishonorable to receive for my own use money tendered by men of a certain class, from whom I had interdicted the receipt of presents to my inferiors, and bound them by oath not to receive them." He held it particularly dishonorable to receive them; he had bound others by an oath not to receive them: but he received them himself; and why does he conceal it? "Why, because," says he, "if the suspicion came upon me, the dishonor would fall upon my pate." Why did he, by an oath, bind his inferiors not to take these bribes? "Why, because it was base and dishonorable so to do; and because it would be mischievous and ruinous to the Company's affairs to suffer them to take bribes." Why, then, did he take them himself? It was ten times more ruinous, that he, who was at the head of the Company's government, and had bound up others so strictly, should practise the same himself; and "therefore," says he, "I was more than ordinarily cautious." What! to avoid it? "No; to carry it on in so clandestine and private a manner as might secure me from the suspicion of that which I know to be detestable, and bound others up from practising."

We shall prove that the kind of men from whom he interdicted his Committee to receive bribes were the identical men from whom he received them himself. If it was good for him, it was good for them to be permitted these means of extorting; and if it ought at all to be practised, they ought to be admitted to extort for the good of the Company. Rajah Nobkissin was one of the men from whom he interdicted them to receive bribes, and from whom he received a bribe for his own use. But he says he concealed it from them, because he thought great mischief might happen even from their suspicion of it, and lest they should thereby be inclined themselves to practise it, and to break their oaths.

You take it, then, for granted that he really concealed it from them? No such thing. His principal confidant in receiving these bribes was Mr. Croftes, who was a principal person in this Board of Revenue, and whom he had made to swear not to take bribes: he is the confidant, and the very receiver, as we shall prove to your Lordships. What will your Lordships think of his affirming and averring a direct falsehood, that he did it to conceal it from these men, when one of them was his principal confidant and agent in the transaction? What will you think of his being more than ordinarily cautious to avoid the suspicion of it? He ought to have avoided the crime, and the suspicion would take care of itself.

"For these reasons," he says, "I caused it to be transported immediately to the treasury. There I well knew, Sir, it could not be received, without being passed to some credit; and this could only be done by entering it as a loan or as a deposit. The first was the least liable to reflection, and therefore I had obviously recourse to it. Why the second sum was entered as a deposit I am utterly ignorant. Possibly it was done without any special direction from me; possibly because it was the simplest mode of entry, and therefore preferred, as the transaction itself did not require concealment, having been already avowed."

My Lords, in fact, every word of this is either false or groundless: it is completely fallacious in every part. The first sum, he says, was entered as a loan, the second as a deposit. Why was this done? Because, when you enter moneys of this kind, you must enter them under some name, some head of account; "and I entered them," he says, "under these, because otherwise there was no entering them at all." Is this true? Will he stick to this? I shall desire to know from his learned counsel, some time or other, whether that is a point he will take issue upon. Your Lordships will see there were other bribes of his which he brought under a regular official head, namely, durbar charges; and there is no reason why he should not have brought these under the same head. Therefore what he says, that there is no other way of entering them but as loans and deposits, is not true. He next says, that in the second sum there was no reason for concealment, because it was avowed. But that false deposit was as much concealment as the false loan, for he entered that money as his own; whereas, when he had a mind to carry any money to the Company's account, he knew how to do it, for he had been accustomed to enter it under a general name, called durbar charges,—a name which, in its extent at least, was very much his own invention, and which, as he gives no account of those charges, is as large and sufficient to cover any fraudulent expenditure in the account as, one would think, any person could wish. You see him, then, first guessing one thing, then another,—first giving this reason, then another; at last, however, he seems to be satisfied that he has hit upon the true reason of his conduct.

Now let us open the next paragraph, and see what it is.—"Although I am firmly persuaded that these were my sentiments on the occasion, yet I will not affirm that they were. Though I feel their impression as the remains of a series of thoughts retained on my memory, I am not certain that they may not have been produced by subsequent reflection on the principal fact, combining with it the probable motives of it. Of this I am certain, that it was my design originally to have concealed the receipt of all the sums, except the second, even from the knowledge of the Court of Directors. They had answered my purpose of public utility, and I had almost dismissed them from my remembrance."

My Lords, you will observe in this most astonishing account which he gives here, that several of these sums he meant to conceal forever, even from the knowledge of the Directors. Look back to his letter of 22d May, 1782, and his letter of the 16th of December, and in them he tells you that he might have concealed them, but that he was resolved not to conceal them; that he thought it highly dishonorable so to do; that his conscience would have been wounded, if he had done it; and that he was afraid it would be thought that this discovery was brought from him in consequence of the Parliamentary inquiries. Here he says of a discovery which he values himself upon making voluntarily, that he is afraid it should be attributed to arise from motives of fear. Now, at last, he tells you, from Cheltenham, at a time when he had just cause to dread the strict account to which he is called this day, first, that he cannot tell whether any one motive which he assigns, either in this letter or in the former, were his real motive or not; that he does not know whether he has not invented them since, in consequence of a train of meditation upon what he might have done or might have said; and, lastly, he says, contrary to all his former declarations, "that he had never meant nor could give the Directors the least notice of them at all, as they had answered his purpose, and he had dismissed them from his remembrance." "I intended," he says, "always to keep them secret, though I have declared to you solemnly, over and over again, that I did not. I do not care how you discovered them; I have forgotten them; I have dismissed them from my remembrance." Is this the way in which money is to be received and accounted for?

He then proceeds thus:—"But when fortune threw a sum of money in my way of a magnitude which could not be concealed, and the peculiar delicacy of my situation at the time I received it made me more circumspect of appearances, I chose to apprise my employers of it, which I did hastily and generally: hastily, perhaps, to prevent the vigilance and activity of secret calumny; and generally, because I knew not the exact amount of which I was in the receipt, but not in the full possession. I promised to acquaint them with the result as soon as I should be in possession of it; and, in the performance of my promise, I thought it consistent with it to add to the amount all the former appropriations of the same kind: my good genius then suggesting to me, with a spirit of caution which might have spared me the trouble of this apology, had I universally attended to it, that, if I had suppressed them, and they were afterwards known, I might be asked what were my motives for withholding a part of these receipts from the knowledge of the Court of Directors and informing them of the rest, it being my wish to clear up every doubt."

I am almost ashamed to remark upon the tergiversations and prevarications perpetually ringing the changes in this declaration. He would not have discovered this hundred thousand pounds, if he could have concealed it: he would have discovered it, lest malicious persons should be telling tales of it. He has a system of concealment: he never discovers anything, but when he thinks it can be forced from him. He says, indeed, "I could conceal these things forever, but my conscience would not give me leave": but it is guilt, and not honesty of conscience, that always prompts him. At one time it is the malice of people and the fear of misrepresentation which induced him to make the disclosure; and he values himself on the precaution which this fear had suggested to him. At another time it is the magnitude of the sum which produced this effect: nothing but the impossibility of concealing it could possibly have made him discover it. This hundred thousand pounds he declares he would have concealed, if he could; and yet he values himself upon the discovery of it. Oh, my Lords, I am afraid that sums of much greater magnitude have not been discovered at all! Your Lordships now see some of the artifices of this letter. You see the variety of styles he adopts, and how he turns himself into every shape and every form. But, after all, do you find any clear discovery? do you find any satisfactory answer to the Directors' letter? does he once tell you from whom he received the money? does he tell you for what he received it, what the circumstances of the persons giving it were, or any explanation whatever of his mode of accounting for it? No: and here, at last, after so many years' litigation, he is called to account for his prevaricating, false accounts in Calcutta, and cannot give them to you.

His explanation of his conduct relative to the bonds now only remains for your Lordships' consideration. Before he left Calcutta, in July, 1784 [1781?], he says, when he was going upon a service which he thought a service of danger, he indorsed the false bonds which he had taken from the Company, declaring them to be none of his. You will observe that these bonds had been in his hands from the 9th or 15th of January (I am not quite sure of the exact date) to the day when he went upon this service, some time in the month of July, 1784 [1781?]. This service he had formerly declared he did not apprehend to be a service of danger; but he found it to be so after: it was in anticipation of that danger that he made this attestation and certificate upon the bonds. But who ever saw them? Mr. Larkins saw them, says he: "I gave them Mr. Larkins." We will show you hereafter that Mr. Larkins deserves no credit in this business,—that honor binds him not to discover the secrets of Mr. Hastings. But why did he not deliver them up entirely, when he was going upon that service? for all pretence of concealment in the business was now at an end, as we shall prove. Why did he not cancel these bonds? Why keep them at all? Why not enter truly the state of the account in the Company's records? "But I indorsed them," he says. "Did you deliver them so indorsed into the treasury?" "No, I delivered them indorsed into the hands of my bribe-broker and agent." "But why not destroy them, or give them up to the Company, and say you were paid, which would have been the only truth in this transaction? Why did you not indorse them before? Why not, during the long period of so many years, cancel them?" No, he kept them to the very day when he was going from Calcutta, and had made a declaration that they were not his. Never before, upon any account, had they appeared; and though the Committee of the House of Commons, in the Eleventh Report, had remarked upon all these scandalous proceedings and prevarications, yet he was not stimulated, even then, to give up these bonds. He held them in his hands till the time when he was preparing for his departure from Calcutta, in spite of the Directors, in spite of the Parliament, in spite of the cries of his own conscience, in a matter which was now grown public, and would knock doubly upon his reputation and conduct. He then declares they are not for his own use, but for the Company's service. But were they then cancelled? I do not find a trace of their being cancelled. In this letter of the 17th of January, 1785, he says with regard to these bonds, "The following sums were paid into the treasury, and bonds granted for the same in the name of the Governor-General, in whose possession the bonds remain, with a declaration upon each, indorsed and signed by him, that he has no claim on the Company for the amount either of principal or interest, no part of the latter having been received."

To the account of the 22d of May, of the indorsement, is added the declaration upon oath. But why any man need to declare upon oath that the money which he has fraudulently taken and concealed from another person is not his is the most extraordinary thing in the world. If he had a mind to have it placed to his credit as his own, then an oath would be necessary; but in this case any one would believe him upon his word. He comes, however, and says, "This is indorsed upon oath." Oath! before what magistrate? In whose possession were the bonds? Were they given up? There is no trace of that upon the record, and it stands for him to prove that they were ever given up, and in any hands but Mr. Larkins's and his own. So here are the bonds, begun in obscurity and ending in obscurity, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, corruption to corruption, and fraud to fraud. This is all we see of these bonds, till Mr. Larkins, to whom he writes some letter concerning them which does not appear, is called to read a funeral sermon over them.

* * * * *

My Lords, I am come now near the period of this class of Mr. Hastings's bribes. I am a little exhausted. There are many circumstances that might make me wish not to delay this business by taking up another day at your Lordships' bar, in order to go through this long, intricate scene of corruption. But my strength now fails me. I hope within a very short time, to-morrow or the next court-day, to finish it, and to go directly into evidence, as I long much to do, to substantiate the charge; but it was necessary that the evidence should be explained. You have heard as much of the drama as I could go through: bear with my weakness a little: Mr. Larkins's letter will be the epilogue to it. I have already incurred the censure of the prisoner; I mean to increase it, by bringing home to him the proof of his crimes, and to display them in all their force and turpitude. It is my duty to do it; I feel it an obligation nearest to my heart.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] See this letter in the Appendix to the Eighth and Sixteenth Charges, Vol. IX. pp. 319-325, in the present edition.



SPEECH

ON

THE SIXTH ARTICLE OF CHARGE.

FOURTH DAY: THURSDAY, MAY 7, 1789.

My Lords,—When I had the honor last to address you from this place, I endeavored to press this position upon your minds, and to fortify it by the example of the proceedings of Mr. Hastings,—that obscurity and inaccuracies in a matter of account constituted a just presumption of fraud. I showed, from his own letters, that his accounts were confused and inaccurate. I am ready, my Lords, to admit that there are situations in which a minister in high office may use concealment: it may be his duty to use concealment from the enemies of his masters; it may be prudent to use concealment from his inferiors in the service. It will always be suspicious to use concealment from his colleagues and cooerdinates in office; but when, in a money transaction, any man uses concealment with regard to them to whom the money belongs, he is guilty of a fraud. My Lords, I have shown you that Mr. Hastings kept no account, by his own confession, of the moneys that he had privately taken, as he pretends, for the Company's service, and we have but too much reason to presume for his own. We have shown you, my Lords, that he has not only no accounts, but no memory; we have shown that he does not even understand his own motives; that, when called upon to recollect them, he begs to guess at them; and that as his memory is to be supplied by his guess, so he has no confidence in his guesses. He at first finds, after a lapse of about a year and a half, or somewhat less, that he cannot recollect what his motives were to certain actions which upon the very face of them appeared fraudulent. He is called to an account some years after, to explain what they were, and he makes a just reflection upon it,—namely, that, as his memory did not enable him to find out his own motive at the former time, it is not to be expected that it would be clearer a year after. Your Lordships will, however, recollect, that in the Cheltenham letter, which is made of no perishable stuff, he begins again to guess; but after he has guessed and guessed again, and after he has gone through all the motives he can possibly assign for the action, he tells you he does not know whether those were his real motives, or whether he has not invented them since.

In that situation the accounts of the Company were left with regard to very great sums which passed through Mr. Hastings's hands, and for which he, instead of giving his masters credit, took credit to himself, and, being their debtor, as he confesses himself to be at that time, took a security for that debt as if he had been their creditor. This required explanation. Explanation he was called upon for, over and over again; explanation he did not give, and declared he could not give. He was called upon for it when in India: he had not leisure to attend to it there. He was called upon for it when in Europe: he then says he must send for it to India. With much prevarication, and much insolence too, he confesses himself guilty of falsifying the Company's accounts by making himself their creditor when he was their debtor, and giving false accounts of this false transaction. The Court of Directors was slow to believe him guilty; Parliament expressed a strong suspicion of his guilt, and wished for further information. Mr. Hastings about this time began to imagine his conscience to be a faithful and true monitor,—which it were well he had attended to upon many occasions, as it would have saved him his appearance here,—and it told him that he was in great danger from the Parliamentary inquiries that were going on. It was now to be expected that he would have been in haste to fulfil the promise which he had made in the Patna letter of the 20th of January, 1782; and accordingly we find that about this time his first agent, Major Fairfax, was sent over to Europe, which agent entered himself at the India House, and appeared before the Committee of the House of Commons, as an agent expressly sent over to explain whatever might appear doubtful in his conduct. Major Fairfax, notwithstanding the character in which Mr. Hastings employed him, appeared to be but a letter-carrier: he had nothing to say: he gave them no information in the India House at all: to the Committee (I can speak with the clearness of a witness) he gave no satisfaction whatever. However, this agent vanished in a moment, in order to make way for another, more substantial, more efficient agent,—an agent perfectly known in this country,—an agent known by the name given to him by Mr. Hastings, who, like the princes of the East, gives titles: he calls him an incomparable agent; and by that name he is very well known to your Lordships and the world. This agent, Major Scott, who I believe was here prior to the time of Major Fairfax's arrival in the character of an agent, and for the very same purposes, was called before the Committee, and examined, point by point, article by article, upon all that obscure enumeration of bribes which the Court of Directors declare they did not understand; but he declared that he could speak nothing with regard to any of these transactions, and that he had got no instructions to explain any part of them. There was but one circumstance which in the course of his examination we drew from him,—namely, that one of these articles, entered in the account of the 22d of May as a deposit, had been received from Mr. Hastings as a bribe from Cheyt Sing. He produced an extract of a letter relative to it, which your Lordships in the course of this trial may see, and which will lead us into a further and more minute inquiry on that head; but when that committee made their report in 1783, not one single article had been explained to Parliament, not one explained to the Company, except this bribe of Cheyt Sing, which Mr. Hastings had never thought proper to communicate to the East India Company, either by himself, nor, as far as we could find out, by his agent; nor was it at last otherwise discovered than as it was drawn out from him by a long examination in the Committee of the House of Commons. And thus, notwithstanding the letters he had written and the agents he employed, he seemed absolutely and firmly resolved to give his employers no satisfaction at all. What is curious in this proceeding is, that Mr. Hastings, all the time he conceals, endeavors to get himself the credit of a discovery. Your Lordships have seen what his discovery is; but Mr. Hastings, among his other very extraordinary acquisitions, has found an effectual method of concealment through discovery. I will venture to say, that, whatever suspicions there might have been of Mr. Hastings's bribes, there was more effectual concealment in regard to every circumstance respecting them in that discovery than if he had kept a total silence. Other means of discovery might have been found, but this, standing in the way, prevented the employment of those means.

Things continued in this state till the time of the letter from Cheltenham. The Cheltenham letter declared that Mr. Hastings knew nothing of the matter,—that he had brought with him no accounts to England upon the subject; and though it appears by this very letter that he had with him at Cheltenham (if he wrote the letter at Cheltenham) a great deal of his other correspondence, that he had his letter of the 22d of May with him, yet any account that could elucidate that letter he declared that he had not; but he hinted that a Mr. Larkins, in India, whom your Lordships will be better acquainted with, was perfectly apprised of all that transaction. Your Lordships will observe that Mr. Hastings has all his faculties, some way or other, in deposit: one person can speak to his motives; another knows his fortune better than himself; to others he commits the sentimental parts of his defence; to Mr. Larkins he commits his memory. We shall see what a trustee of memory Mr. Larkins is, and how far he answers the purpose which might be expected, when appealed to by a man who has no memory himself, or who has left it on the other side of the water, and who leaves it to another to explain for him accounts which he ought to have kept himself, and circumstances which ought to be deposited in his own memory.

This Cheltenham letter, I believe, originally became known, as far as I can recollect, to the House of Commons, upon a motion of Mr. Hastings's own agent: I do not like to be positive upon that point, but I think that was the first appearance of it. It appeared likewise in public: for it was thought so extraordinary and laborious a performance, by the writer or his friends, (as indeed it is,) that it might serve to open a new source of eloquence in the kingdom, and consequently was printed, I believe, at the desire of the parties themselves. But however it became known, it raised an extreme curiosity in the public to hear, when Mr. Hastings could say nothing, after so many years, of his own concerns and his own affairs, what satisfaction Mr. Larkins at last would give concerning them. This letter was directed to Mr. Devaynes, Chairman of the Court of Directors. It does not appear that the Court of Directors wrote anything to India in consequence of it, or that they directed this satisfactory account of the business should be given them; but some private communications passed between Mr. Hastings, or his agents, and Mr. Larkins. There was a general expectation upon this occasion, I believe, in the House of Commons and in the nation at large, to know what would become of the portentous inquiry. Mr. Hastings has always contrived to have half the globe between question and answer: when he was in India, the question went to him, and then he adjourned his answer till he came to England; and when he came to England, it was necessary his answer should arrive from India; so that there is no manner of doubt that all time was given for digesting, comparing, collating, and making up a perfect memory upon the occasion.

But, my Lords, Mr. Larkins, who has in custody Mr. Hastings's memory, no small part of his conscience, and all his accounts, did, at last, in compliance with Mr. Hastings's desire, think proper to send an account. Then, at last, we may expect light. Where are we to look for accounts, but from an accountant-general? Where are they to be met with, unless from him? And accordingly, in that night of perplexity into which Mr. Hastings's correspondence had plunged them, men looked up to the dawning of the day which was to follow that star, the little Lucifer, which with his lamp was to dispel the shades of night, and give us some sort of light into this dark, mysterious transaction. At last the little lamp appeared, and was laid on the table of this House of Commons, on the motion of Mr. Hastings's friends: for we did not know of its arrival. It arrives, with all the intelligence, all the memory, accuracy, and clearness which Mr. Larkins can furnish for Mr. Hastings upon a business that before was nothing but mystery and confusion. The account is called,—

"Copy of the particulars of the dates on which the component parts of sundry sums included in the account of sums received on the account of the Honorable Company by the Governor-General, or paid to their Treasury by his order, and applied to their service, were received for Mr. Hastings, and paid to the Sub-Treasurer."

The letter from Mr. Larkins consisted of two parts: first, what was so much wanted, an account; next, what was wanted most of all to such an account as he sent, a comment and explanation. The account consisted of two members: one gave an account of several detached bribes that Mr. Hastings had received within the course of about a year and a half; and the other, of a great bribe which he had received in one gross sum of one hundred thousand pounds from the Nabob of Oude. It appeared to us, upon looking into these accounts, that there was some geography, a little bad chronology, but nothing else in the first: neither the persons who took the money, nor the persons from whom it was taken, nor the ends for which it was given, nor any other circumstances are mentioned.

The first thing we saw was Dinagepore. I believe you know this piece of geography,—that it is one of the provinces of the kingdom of Bengal. We then have a long series of months, with a number of sums added to them; and in the end it is said, that on the 18th and 19th of Asin, (meaning part of September and part of October,) were paid to Mr. Croftes two lac of rupees; and then remains one lac, which was taken from a sum of three lac six thousand nine hundred and seventy-three rupees. After we had waited for Mr. Hastings's own account, after it had been pursued through a series of correspondence in vain, after his agents had come to England to explain it, this is the explanation that your Lordships have got of this first article, Dinagepore. Not the person paid to, not the person paying, are mentioned, nor any other circumstance, except the signature, G.G.S.: this might serve for George Gilbert Sanders, or any other name you please; and seeing Croftes above it, you might imagine it was an Englishman. And this, which I call a geographical and a chronological account, is the only account we have. Mr. Larkins, upon the mere face of the account, sadly disappoints us; and I will venture to say that in matters of account Bengal book-keeping is as remote from good book-keeping as the Bengal painches are remote from all the rules of good composition. We have, however, got some light: namely, that one G.G.S. has paid some money to Mr. Croftes for some purpose, but from whom we know not, nor where; that there is a place called Dinagepore; and that Mr. Hastings received some money from somebody in Dinagepore.

The next article is Patna. Your Lordships are not so ill acquainted with the geography of India as not to know that there is such a place as Patna, nor so ill acquainted with the chronology of it as not to know that there are three months called Baisakh, Asin, Chait. Here was paid to Mr. Croftes two lac of rupees, and there was left a balance of about two more. But though you learn with regard to the province of Dinagepore that there is a balance to be discharged by G.G.S., yet with regard to Patna we have not even a G.G.S.: we have no sort of light whatever to know through whose hands the money passed, nor any glimpse of light whatever respecting it.

You may expect to be made amends in the other province, called Nuddea, where Mr. Hastings had received a considerable sum of money. There is the very same darkness: not a word from whom received, by whom received, or any other circumstance, but that it was paid into the hands of Mr. Hastings's white banian, as he was commonly called in that country, into the hands of Mr. Croftes, who is his white agent in receiving bribes: for he was very far from having but one.

After all this inquiry, after so many severe animadversions from the House of Commons, after all those reiterated letters from the Directors, after an application to Mr. Hastings himself, when you are hunting to get at some explanation of the proceedings mentioned in the letter of the month of May, 1782, you receive here by Mr. Larkins's letter, which is dated the 5th of August, 1786, this account, which, to be sure, gives an amazing light into this business: it is a letter for which it was worth sending to Bengal, worth waiting for with all that anxious expectation with which men wait for great events. Upon the face of the account there is not one single word which can tend to illustrate the matter: he sums up the whole, and makes out that there was received five lac and fifty thousand rupees, that is to say, 55,000l., out of the sum of nine lac and fifty thousand engaged to be paid: namely,—

From Dinagepore 4,00,000 From Nuddea 1,50,000 And from Patna 4,00,000 ———— 9,50,000 ———— Or L95,000

Now you have got full light! Cabooleat signifies a contract, or an agreement; and this agreement was, to pay Mr. Hastings, as one should think, certain sums of money,—it does not say from whom, but only that such a sum of money was paid, and that there remains such a balance. When you come and compare the money received by Mr. Croftes with these cabooleats, you find that the cabooleats amount to 95,000l., and that the receipt has been about 55,000l., and that upon the face of this account there is 40,000l. somewhere or other unaccounted for. There never was such a mode of account-keeping, except in the new system of this bribe exchequer.

Your Lordships will now see, from this luminous, satisfactory, and clear account, which could come from no other than a great accountant and a great financier, establishing some new system of finance, and recommending it to the world as superior to those old-fashioned foolish establishments, the Exchequer and Bank of England, what lights are received from Mr. Hastings.

However, it does so happen that from these obscure hints we have been able to institute examinations which have discovered such a mass of fraud, guilt, corruption, and oppression as probably never before existed since the beginning of the world; and in that darkness we hope and trust the diligence and zeal of the House of Commons will find light sufficient to make a full discovery of his base crimes. We hope and trust, that, after all his concealments, and though he appear resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication, all his artifices will not be able to secure him from the siege which the diligence of the House of Commons has laid to his corruptions.

Your Lordships will remark, in a paragraph, which, though it stands last, is the first in principle, in Mr. Larkins's letter, that, having before given his comment, he perorates, as is natural upon such an occasion. This peroration, as is usual in perorations, is in favor of the parties speaking it, and ad conciliandum auditorem. "Conscious," he says, "that the concern which I have had in these transactions needs neither an apology nor an excuse,"—that is rather extraordinary, too!—"and that I have in no action of my life sacrificed the duty and fidelity which I owed to my honorable employers either to the regard which I felt for another or to the advancement of my own fortune, I shall conclude this address, firmly relying upon the candor of those before whom it may be submitted for its being deemed a satisfactory as well as a circumstantial compliance with the requisition in conformity to which the information it affords has been furnished,"—meaning, as your Lordships will see in the whole course of the letter, that he had written it in compliance with the requisition and in conformity to the information he had been furnished with by Mr. Hastings,—"without which it would have been as base as dishonorable for me spontaneously to have afforded it: for, though the duty which every man owes to himself should render him incapable of making an assertion not strictly true, no man actuated either by virtuous or honorable sentiments could mistakenly apprehend, that, unless he betrayed the confidence reposed in him by another, he might be deemed deficient in fidelity to his employers."

My Lords, here is, in my opinion, a discovery very well worthy your Lordships' attention; here is the accountant-general of the Company, who declares, and fixes it as a point of honor, that he would not have made a discovery so important to them, if Mr. Hastings himself had not authorized him to make it: a point to which he considers himself bound by his honor to adhere. Let us see what becomes of us, when the principle of honor is so debauched and perverted. A principle of honor, as long as it is connected with virtue, adds no small efficacy to its operation, and no small brilliancy and lustre to its appearance: but honor, the moment that it becomes unconnected with the duties of official function, with the relations of life, and the eternal and immutable rules of morality, and appears in its substance alien to them, changes its nature, and, instead of justifying a breach of duty, aggravates all its mischiefs to an almost infinite degree; by the apparent lustre of the surface, it hides from you the baseness and deformity of the ground. Here is Mr. Hastings's agent, Mr. Larkins, the Company's general accountant, prefers his attachment to Mr. Hastings to his duty to the Company. Instead of the account which he ought to give to them in consequence of the trust reposed in him, he thinks himself bound by honor to Mr. Hastings, if Mr. Hastings had not called for that explanation, not to have given it: so that, whatever obscurity is in this explanation, it is because Mr. Hastings did not authorize or require him to give a clearer. Here is a principle of treacherous fidelity, of perfidious honor, of the faith of conspirators against their masters, the faith of robbers against the public, held up against the duty of an officer in a public situation. You see how they are bound to one another, and how they give their fidelity to keep the secrets of one another, to prevent the Directors having a true knowledge of their affairs; and I am sure, if you do not destroy this honor of conspirators and this faith of robbers, that there will be no other honor and no other fidelity among the servants in India. Mr. Larkins, your Lordships see, adheres to the principle of secrecy.

You will next remark that Mr. Hastings had as many bribe-factors as bribes. There was confidence to be reposed in each of them, and not one of these men appears to be in the confidence of another. You will find in this letter the policy, the frame, and constitution of this new exchequer. Mr. Croftes seems to have known things which Mr. Larkins did not; Mr. Larkins knew things which Gunga Govind Sing did not; Gunga Govind Sing knew things which none of the rest of the confederates knew. Cantoo Baboo, who appears in this letter as a principal actor, was in a secret which Mr. Larkins did not know; it appears likewise, that there was a Persian moonshee in a secret of which Cantoo Baboo was ignorant; and it appears that Mr. Palmer was in the secret of a transaction not intrusted to any of the rest. Such is the labyrinth of this practical painche, or screw, that, if, for instance, you were endeavoring to trace backwards some transaction through Major Palmer, you would be stopped there, and must go back again; for it had begun with Cantoo Baboo. If in another you were to penetrate into the dark recess of the black breast of Cantoo Baboo, you could not go further; for it began with Gunga Govind Sing. If you pierce the breast of Gunga Govind Sing, you are again stopped; a Persian moonshee was the confidential agent. If you get beyond this, you find Mr. Larkins knew something which the others did not; and at last you find Mr. Hastings did not put entire confidence in any of them. You will see, by this letter, that he kept his accounts in all colors, black, white, and mezzotinto; that he kept them in all languages,—in Persian, in Bengalee, and in a language which, I believe, is neither Persian nor Bengalee, nor any other known in the world, but a language in which Mr. Hastings found it proper to keep his accounts and to transact his business. The persons carrying on the accounts are Mr. Larkins, an Englishman, Cantoo Baboo, a Gentoo, and a Persian moonshee, probably a Mahometan. So all languages, all religions, all descriptions of men are to keep the account of these bribes, and to make out this valuable account which Mr. Larkins gave you!

Let us now see how far the memory, observation, and knowledge of the persons referred to can supply the want of them in Mr. Hastings. These accounts come at last, though late, from Mr. Larkins, who, I will venture to say, let the banians boast what they will, has skill perhaps equal to the best of them: he begins by explaining to you something concerning the present of the ten lac. I wish your Lordships always to take Mr. Hastings's word, where it can be had,—or Mr. Larkins's, who was the representative of and memory-keeper to Mr. Hastings; and then I may perhaps take the liberty of making some observations upon it.

Extract of a Letter from William Larkins, Accountant-General of Bengal, to the Chairman of the East India Company, dated 5th August, 1786.

"Mr. Hastings returned from Benares to Calcutta on the 5th February, 1782. At that time I was wholly ignorant of the letter which on the 20th January he wrote from Patna to the Secret Committee of the Honorable the Court of Directors. The rough draught of this letter, in the handwriting of Major Palmer, is now in my possession. Soon after his arrival at the Presidency, he requested me to form the account of his receipts and disbursements, which you will find journalized in the 280th, &c., and 307th pages of the Honorable Company's general books of the year 1781-2. My official situation as accountant-general had previously convinced me that Mr. Hastings could not have made the issues which were acknowledged as received from him by some of the paymasters of the army, unless he had obtained some such supply as that which he afterwards, viz., on the 22d May, 1782, made known to me, when I immediately suggested to him the necessity of his transmitting that account which accompanied his letter of that date, till when the promise contained in his letter of 20th January had entirely escaped his recollection."

The first thing I would remark on this (and I believe your Lordships have rather gone before me in the remark) is, that Mr. Hastings came down to Calcutta on the 5th of February; that then, or a few days after, he calls to him his confidential and faithful friend, (not his official secretary, for he trusted none of his regular secretaries with these transactions,)—he calls him to help him to make out his accounts during his absence. You would imagine that at that time he trusted this man with his account. No such thing: he goes on with the accountant-general, accounting with him for money expended, without ever explaining to that accountant-general how that money came into his hands. Here, then, we have the accountant making out the account, and the person accounting. The accountant does not in any manner make an objection, and say, "Here you are giving me an account by which it appears that you have expended money, but you have not told me where you received it: how shall I make out a fair account of debtor and creditor between you and the Company?" He does no such thing. There lies a suspicion in his breast that Mr. Hastings must have taken some money in some irregular way, or he could not have made those payments. Mr. Larkins begins to suspect him. "Where did you lose this bodkin?" said one lady to another, upon a certain occasion. "Pray, Madam, where did you find it?" Mr. Hastings, at the very moment of his life when confidence was required, even when making up his accounts with his accountant, never told him one word of the matter. You see he had no confidence in Mr. Larkins. This makes out one of the propositions I want to impress upon your Lordships' minds, that no one man did he let into every part of his transactions: a material circumstance, which will help to lead your Lordships' judgment in forming your opinion upon many parts of this cause.

You see that Mr. Larkins suspected him. Probably in consequence of those suspicions, or from some other cause, he at last told him, upon the 22d of May, 1782, (but why at that time, rather than at any other time, does not appear; and this we shall find very difficult to be accounted for,)—he told him that he had received a bribe from the Nabob of Oude, of 100,000l. He informs him of this on the 22d of May, which, when the accounts were making up, he conceals from him. And he communicates to him the rough draught of his letter to the Court of Directors, informing them that this business was not transacted by any known secretary of the Company, nor with the intervention of any interpreter of the Company, nor passed through any official channel whatever, but through a gentleman much in his confidence, his military secretary; and, as if receiving bribes, and receiving letters concerning them, and carrying on correspondence relative to them, was a part of military duty, the rough draught of this letter was in the hands of this military secretary. Upon the communication of the letter, it rushes all at once into the mind of Mr. Larkins, who knows Mr. Hastings's recollection, who knows what does and what does not escape it, and who had a memory ready to explode at Mr. Hastings's desire, "Good God!" says he, "you have promised the Directors an account of this business!"—a promise which Mr. Larkins assures the Directors, upon his word, had entirely escaped Mr. Hastings's recollection. Mr. Hastings, it seems, had totally forgotten the promise relative to the paltry sum of 100,000l. which he had made to the Court of Directors in the January before; he never once thought of it, no, not even when he was making up his accounts of that very identical sum, till the 22d of May. So that these persons answer for one another's bad memory: and you will see they have good reason. Mr. Hastings's want of recollection appears in things of some moment. However lightly he may regard the sum of 100,000l., which, considering the enormous sums he has received, I dare say he does,—for he totally forgot it, he knew nothing about it,—observe what sort of memory this registrar and accountant of such sums as 100,000l. has. In what confusion of millions must it be, that such sums can be lost to Mr. Hastings's recollection! However, at last it was brought to his recollection, and he thought that it was necessary to give some account of it. And who is the accountant whom he produces? His own memory is no accountant. He had dismissed the matter (as he happily expresses it in the Cheltenham letter) from his memory. Major Palmer is not the accountant. One is astonished that a man who had had 100,000l. in his hands, and laid it out, as he pretends, in the public service, has not a scrap of paper to show for it. No ordinary or extraordinary account is given of it. Well, what is to be done in such circumstances? He sends for a person whose name you have heard and will often hear of, the faithful Cantoo Baboo. This man comes to Mr. Larkins, and he reads to him (be so good as to remark the words) from a Bengal paper the account of the detached bribes. Your Lordships will observe that I have stated the receipt of a number of detached bribes, and a bribe in one great body: one, the great corps d'armee; the other, flying scouting bodies, which were only to be collected together by a skilful man who knew how to manage them, and regulate the motions of those wild and disorderly troops. When No. 2 was to be explained, Cantoo Baboo failed him; he was not worth a farthing as to any transaction that happened when Mr. Hastings was in the Upper Provinces, where though he was his faithful and constant attendant through the whole, yet he could give no account of it. Mr. Hastings's moonshee then reads three lines from a paper to Mr. Larkins. Now it is no way even insinuated that both the Bengal and Persian papers did not contain the account of other immense sums; and, indeed, from the circumstance of only three lines being read from the Persian paper, your Lordships will be able, in your own minds, to form some judgment upon this business.

I shall now proceed with his letter of explanation. "The particulars," he goes on to say, "of the paper No. 1 were read to me from a Bengal paper by Mr. Hastings's banian, Cantoo Baboo; and if I am not mistaken, the three first lines of that No. 2 were read over to me from a Persian paper by his moonshee. The translation of these particulars, made by me, was, as I verily believe, the first complete memorandum that he ever possessed of them in the English language; and I am confident, that, if I had not suggested to him the necessity of his taking this precaution, he would at this moment have been unable to have afforded any such information concerning them."

Now, my Lords, if he had not got, on the intimation of Mr. Larkins, some scraps of paper, your Lordships might have at this day wanted that valuable information which Mr. Larkins has laid before you. These, however, contain, Mr. Larkins says, "the first complete"—what?—account, do you imagine?—no, "the first complete memorandum." You would imagine that he would himself, for his own use, have notched down, somewhere or other, in short-hand, in Persian characters, short without vowels, or in some other way, memorandums. But he had not himself even a memorandum of this business; and consequently, when he was at Cheltenham, and even here at your bar, he could never have had any account of a sum of 200,000l., but by this account of Mr. Larkins, taken, as people read them, from detached pieces of paper.

One would have expected that Mr. Larkins, being warned that day, and cautioned by the strange memory of Mr. Hastings, and the dangerous situation, therefore, in which he himself stood, would at least have been very guarded and cautious. Hear what he next says upon this subject. "As neither of the other sums passed through his hands, these" (meaning the scraps) "contained no such specification, and consequently could not enable him to afford the information with which he has requested me to furnish you; and it is more than probable, that, if the affidavit which I took on the 16th December, 1782, had not exposed my character to the suspicion of my being capable of committing one of the basest trespasses upon the confidence of mankind, I should, at this distance of time, have been equally unable to have complied with this request: but after I became acquainted with the insinuation suggested in the Eleventh Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, I thought it but too probable, that, unless I was possessed of the original memorandum which I had made of these transactions, I might not at some distant period be able to prove that I had not descended to commit so base an action. I have therefore always most carefully preserved every paper which I possessed regarding these transactions."

You see that Mr. Hastings had no memorandums of his accounts; you see, that, after Mr. Larkins had made his memorandums of them, he had no design of guarding or keeping them; and you will commend those wicked and malicious committees who by their reports have told an accountant-general and first public officer of revenue, that, in order to guard his character from their suspicions, it was necessary that he should keep some paper or other of an account. We have heard of the base, wicked, and mercenary license that has been used by these gentlemen of India towards the House of Commons: a license to libel and traduce the diligence of the House of Commons, the purity of their motives, and the fidelity of their actions, by which the very means of informing the people are attempted to be used for the purpose of leaving them in darkness and delusion. But, my Lords, when the accountant-general declares, that, if the House of Commons had not expressed, as they ought to express, much diffidence and distrust respecting these transactions, and even suspected him of perjury, this very day that man would not have produced a scrap of those papers to you, but might have turned them to the basest and most infamous of uses. If, I say, we have saved these valuable fragments by suspecting his integrity, your Lordships will see suspicion is of some use: and I hope the world will learn that punishment will be of use, too, in preventing such transactions.

Your Lordships have seen that no two persons knew anything of these transactions; you see that even memorandums of transactions of very great moment, some of which had passed in the year 1779, were not even so much as put in the shape of complete memoranda until May, 1782; you see that Mr. Hastings never kept them: and there is no reason to imagine that a black banian and a Persian moonshee would have been careful of what Mr. Hastings himself, who did not seem to stimulate his accountants to a vast deal of exactness and a vast deal of fidelity, was negligent. You see that Mr. Larkins, our last, our only hope, if he had not been suspected by the House of Commons, probably would never have kept these papers; and that you could not have had this valuable cargo, such as it is, if it had not been for the circumstance Mr. Larkins thinks proper to mention.

From the specimen which we have given of Mr. Hastings's mode of accounts, of its vouchers, checks, and counter-checks, your Lordships will have observed that the mode itself is past describing, and that the checks and counter-checks, instead of being put upon one another to prevent abuse, are put upon each other to prevent discovery and to fortify abuse. When you hear that one man has an account of receipt, another of expenditure, another of control, you say that office is well constituted: but here is an office constituted by different persons without the smallest connection with each other; for the only purpose which they have ever answered is the purpose of base concealment.

We shall now proceed a little further with Mr. Larkins. The first of the papers from which he took the memoranda was a paper of Cantoo Baboo. It contained detached payments, amounting in the whole, with the cabooleat, or agreement, to about 95,000l. sterling, and of which it appears that there was received by Mr. Croftes 55,000l., and no more.

Now will your Lordships be so good as to let it rest in your memory what sort of an exchequer this is, even with regard to its receipts? As your Lordships have seen the economy and constitution of this office, so now see the receipt. It appears that in the month of May, 1782, out of the sums beginning to be received in the month of Shawal, that is in July, 1779, there was, during that interval, 40,000l. out of 95,000l. sunk somewhere, in some of the turnings over upon the gridiron, through some of those agents and panders of corruption which Mr. Hastings uses. Here is the valuable revenue of the Company, which is to supply them in their exigencies, which is to come from sources which otherwise never would have yielded it,—which, though small in proportion to the other revenue, yet is a diamond, something that by its value makes amends for its want of bulk,—falling short by 40,000l. out of 95,000l. Here is a system made for fraud, and producing all the effects of it.

Upon the face of this account, the agreement was to yield to Mr. Hastings, some way or other, to be paid to Mr. Croftes, 95,000l., and there was a deficiency of 40,000l. Would any man, even with no more sense than Mr. Hastings, who wants all the faculties of the human mind, who has neither memory nor judgment, any man who was that poor half-idiot creature that Mr. Hastings pretends to be, engage in a dealing that was to extort from some one or other an agreement to pay 95,000l. which was not to produce more than 55,000l.? What, then, is become of it? Is it in the hands of Mr. Hastings's wicked bribe-brokers, or in his own hands? Is it in arrear? Do you know anything about it? Whom are you to apply to for information? Why, to G.G.S.—G.G.S. I find to be, what indeed I suspected him to be, a person that I have mentioned frequently to your Lordships, and that you will often hear of, commonly called Gunga Govind Sing,—in a short word, the wickedest of the whole race of banians: the consolidated wickedness of the whole body is to be found in this man.

Of the deficiency which appears in this agreement with somebody or other on the part of Mr. Hastings through Gunga Govind Sing you will expect to hear some explanation. Of the first sum, which is said to have been paid through Gunga Govind Sing, amounting on the cabooleat to four lac, and of which no more than two lac was actually received,—that is to say, half of it was sunk,—we have this memorandum only: "Although Mr. Hastings was extremely dissatisfied with the excuses Gunga Govind Sing assigned for not paying Mr. Croftes the sum stated by the paper No. 1 to be in his charge, he never could obtain from him any further payments on this account." Mr. Hastings is exceedingly dissatisfied with those excuses, and this is the whole account of the transaction. This is the only thing said of Gunga Govind Sing in the account: he neither states how he came to be employed, or for what he was employed. It appears, however, from the transaction, as far as we can make our way through this darkness, that he had actually received 10,000l. of the money, which he did not account for, and that he pretended that there was an arrear of the rest. So here Mr. Hastings's bribe-agent admits that he had received 10,000l., but he will not account for it; he says there is an arrear of another 10,000l.; and thus it appears that he was enabled to take from somebody at Dinagepore, by a cabooleat, 40,000l., of which Mr. Hastings can get but 20,000l.: there is cent per cent loss upon it. Mr. Hastings was so exceedingly dissatisfied with this conduct of Gunga Govind Sing, that you would imagine a breach would have immediately ensued between them. I shall not anticipate what some of my honorable friends will bring before your Lordships; but I tell you, that, so far from quarrelling with Gunga Govind Sing, or being really angry with him, it is only a little pettish love quarrel with Gunga Govind Sing: amantium irae amoris integratio est. For Gunga Govind Sing, without having paid him one shilling of this money, attended him to the Ganges; and one of the last acts of Mr. Hastings's government was to represent this man, who was unfaithful even to fraud, who did not keep the common faith of thieves and robbers, this very man he recommends to the Company as a person who ought to be rewarded, as one of their best and most faithful servants. And how does he recommend him to be rewarded? By giving him the estate of another person,—the way in which Mr. Hastings desires to be always rewarded himself: for, in calling upon the Company's justice to give him some money for expenses with which he never charged them, he desires them to assign him the money upon some person of the country. So here Mr. Hastings recommends Gunga Govind Sing not only to trust, confidence, and employment, which he does very fully, but to a reward taken out of the substance of other people. This is what Mr. Hastings has done with Gunga Govind Sing; and if such are the effects of his anger, what must be the effect of his pleasure and satisfaction? Now I say that Mr. Hastings, who, in fact, saw this man amongst the very last with whom he had any communication in India, could not have so recommended him after this known fraud, in one business only, of 20,000l.,—he could not so have supported him, he could not so have caressed him, he could not so have employed him, he could not have done all this, unless he had paid to Mr. Hastings privately that sum of money which never was brought into any even of these miserable accounts, without some payment or other with which Mr. Hastings was and ought to be satisfied, or unless Gunga Govind Sing had some dishonorable secret to tell of him which he did not dare to provoke him to give a just account of, or, lastly, unless the original agreement was that half or a third of the bribe should go to Gunga Govind Sing.

Such is this patriotic scheme of bribery, this public-spirited corruption which Mr. Hastings has invented upon this occasion, and by which he thinks out of the vices of mankind to draw a better revenue than out of any legal source whatever; and therefore he has resolved to become the most corrupt of all Governors-General, in order to be the most useful servant to the finances of the Company.

So much as to the first article of Dinagepore peshcush. All you have is, that G.G.S is Gunga Govind Sing; that he has cheated the public of half of it; that Mr. Hastings was angry with him, and yet went away from Bengal, rewarding, praising, and caressing him. Are these things to pass as matters of course? They cannot so pass with your Lordships' sagacity: I will venture to say that no court, even of pie-poudre, could help finding him guilty upon such a matter, if such a court had to inquire into it.

The next article is Patna. Here, too, he was to receive 40,000l.; but from whom this deponent saith not. At this circumstance Mr. Larkins, who is a famous deponent, never hints once. You may look through his whole letter, which is a pretty long one, (and which I will save your Lordships the trouble of hearing read at length now, because you will have it before you when you come to the Patna business,) and you will only find that somebody had engaged to pay him 40,000l., and that but half of this sum was received. You want an explanation of this. You have seen the kind of explanation given in the former case, a conjectural explanation of G.G.S. But when you come to the present case, who the person paying was, why the money was not paid, what the cause of failure was, you are not told: you only learn that there was that sum deficient; and Mr. Larkins, who is our last resort and final hope of elucidation in this transaction, throws not the smallest glimpse of light upon it. We of the House of Commons have been reduced to form the best legitimate conjectures we could upon this business, and those conjectures have led us to further evidence, which will enable us to fix one of the most scandalous and most mischievous bribes, in all the circumstances of it, upon Mr. Hastings, that was ever known. If he extorted 40,000l. under pretence of the Company's service, here is again another failure of half the money. Oh, my Lords, you will find that even the remaining part was purchased with the loss of one of the best revenues in India, and with the grievous distress of a country that deserved well your protection, instead of being robbed to give 20,000l. to the Company, and another 20,000l. to some robber or other, black or white. When I say, given to some other robber, black or white, I do not suppose that either generosity, friendship, or even communion, can exist in that country between white men and black: no, their colors are not more adverse than their characters and tempers. There is not that idem velle et idem nolle, there are none of those habits of life, nothing, that can bind men together even in the most ordinary society: the mutual means of such an union do not exist between them. It is a money-dealing, and a money-dealing only, which can exist between them; and when you hear that a black man is favored, and that 20,000l. is pretended to be left in his hands, do not believe it: indeed, you cannot believe it; for we will bring evidence to show that there is no friendship between those people,—and that, when black men give money to a white man, it is a bribe,—and that, when money is given to a black man, he is only a sharer with the white man in their infamous profits. We find, however, somebody, anonymous, with 20,000l. left in his hands; and when we come to discover who the man is, and the final balance which appears against him in his account with the Company, we find that for this 20,000l., which was received for the Company, they paid such a compound interest as was never before paid for money advanced: the most violently griping usurer, in dealing with the most extravagant heir, never made such a bargain as Mr. Hastings has made for the Company by this bribe. Therefore it could be nothing but fraud that could have got him to have undertaken such a revenue. This evidently shows the whole to be a pretence to cover fraud, and not a weak attempt to raise a revenue,—and that Mr. Hastings was not that idiot he represents himself to be, a man forgetting all his offices, all his duties, all his own affairs, and all the public affairs. He does not, however, forget how to make a bargain to get money; but when the money is to be recovered for the Company, (as he says,) he forgets to recover it: so that the accuracy with which he begins a bribe, acribus initiis et soporosa fine, and the carelessness with which he ends it, are things that characterize, not weakness and stupidity, but fraud.

The next article we proceed to is Nuddea. Here we have more light; but does Mr. Larkins anywhere tell you anything about Nuddea? No it appears as if the account had been paid up, and that the cabooleat and the payments answer and tally with each other; yet, when we come to produce the evidence upon these parts, you will see most abundant reason to be assured that there is much more concealed than is given in this account,—that it is an account current, and not an account closed,—and that the agreement was for some other and greater sum than appears. It might be expected that the Company would inquire of Mr. Hastings, and ask, "From whom did he get it? Who has received it? Who is to answer for it?" But he knew that they were not likely to make any inquiry at all,—they are not that kind of people. You would imagine that a mercantile body would have some of the mercantile excellencies, and even you would allow them perhaps some of the mercantile faults. But they have, like Mr. Hastings, forgotten totally the mercantile character; and, accordingly, neither accuracy nor fidelity of account do they ever require of Mr. Hastings. They have too much confidence in him; and he, accordingly, acts like a man in whom such confidence, without reason, is reposed.

Your Lordships may perhaps suppose that the payment of this money was an act of friendship and generosity in the people of the country. No: we have found out, and shall prove, from whom he got it; at least we shall produce such a conjecture upon it as your Lordships will think us bound to do, when we have such an account before us. Here on the face of the account there is no deficiency; but when we look into it, we find skulking in a corner a person called Nundulol, from whom there is received 58,000 rupees. You will find that he, who appears to have paid up this money, and which Mr. Hastings spent as he pleased in his journey to Benares, and who consequently must have had some trust reposed in him, was the wickedest of men, next to those I have mentioned,—always giving the first rank to Gunga Govind Sing, primus inter pares, the second to Debi Sing, the third to Cantoo Baboo: this man is fit to be one next on a par with them. Mr. Larkins, when he comes to explain this article, says, "I believe it is for a part of the Dinagepore peshcush, which would reduce the balance to about 5,000l.": but he does not pretend to know what it is given for; he gives several guesses at it; "but," he says, "as I do not know, I shall not pretend to give more than my conjecture upon it." He is in the right; because we shall prove Nundulol never did have any thing to do with the Dinagepore peshcush. These are very extraordinary proceedings. It is my business simply to state them to your Lordships now; we will give them in afterwards in evidence, and I will leave that evidence to be confirmed and fortified by further observations.

One of the objects of Mr. Larkins's letter is to illustrate the bonds. He says, "The two first stated sums" (namely, Dinagepore and Patna, in the paper marked No. 1, I suppose, for he seems to explain it to be such) "are sums for a part of which Mr. Hastings took two bonds: viz., No. 1539, dated 1st October, 1780, and No. 1540, dated 2d October, 1780, each for the sum of current rupees 1,16,000, or sicca rupees one lac. The remainder of that amount was carried to the credit of the head, Four per Cent Remittance Loan: Mr. Hastings having taken a bond for it, (No. 89,) which has been since completely liquidated, conformable to the law." But before I proceed with the bonds, I will beg leave to recall to your Lordships' recollection that Mr. Larkins states in his letter that these sums were received in November. How does this agree with another state of the transaction given by Mr. Hastings, namely, that the time of his taking the bonds was the 1st and 2d of October? Mr. Larkins, therefore, who has thought proper to say that the money was received in the month of November, has here given as extraordinary an instance either of fraudulent accuracy or shameful official inaccuracy as was ever perhaps discovered. The first sums are asserted to be paid to Mr. Croftes on the 18th and 19th of Asin, 1187. The month of Asin corresponds with the month of September and part of October, and not with November; and it is the more extraordinary that Mr. Larkins should mistake this, because he is in an office which requires monthly payments, and consequently great monthly exactness, and a continual transfer from one month to another: we cannot suppose any accountant in England can be more accurately acquainted with the succession of months than Mr. Larkins must have been with the comparative state of Bengal and English months. How are we to account for this gross inaccuracy? If you have a poet, if you have a politician, if you have a moralist inaccurate, you know that these are cases which, from the narrow bounds of our weak faculties, do not perhaps admit of accuracy. But what is an inaccurate accountant good for? "Silly man, that dost not know thy own silly trade!" was once well said: but the trade here is not silly. You do not even praise an accountant for being accurate, because you have thousands of them; but you justly blame a public accountant who is guilty of a gross inaccuracy. But what end could his being inaccurate answer? Why not name October as well as November? I know no reason for it; but here is certainly a gross mistake: and from the nature of the thing, it is hardly possible to suppose it to be a mere mistake. But take it that it is a mistake, and to have nothing of fraud, but mere carelessness; this, in a man valued by Mr. Hastings for being very punctilious and accurate, is extraordinary.

But to return to the bonds. We find a bond taken in the month of Shawal, 1186, or 1779, but the receipt is said to be in Asin, 1780: that is to say, there was a year and about three months between the collection and the receipt; and during all that period of time an enormous sum of money had lain in the hands of Gunga Govind Sing, to be employed when Mr. Hastings should think fit. He employed it, he says, for the Mahratta expedition. Now he began that letter on the 29th of November by telling you that the bribe would not have been taken from Cheyt Sing, if it had not been at the instigation of an exigency which it seems required a supply of money, to be procured lawfully or unlawfully. But in fact there was no exigency for it before the Berar army came upon the borders of the country,—that army which he invited by his careless conduct towards the Rajah of Berar, and whose hostility he was obliged to buy off by a sum of money; and yet this bribe was taken from Cheyt Sing long before he had this occasion for it. The fund lay in Gunga Govind Sing's hands; and he afterwards applied to that purpose a part of this fund, which he must have taken without any view whatever to the Company's interest. This pretence of the exigency of the Company's affairs is the more extraordinary, because the first receipt of these moneys was some time in the year 1779 (I have not got the exact date of the agreement); and it was but a year before that the Company was so far from being in distress, that he declared he should have, at very nearly the period when this bribe became payable, a very large sum (I do not recollect the precise amount) in their treasury. I cannot certainly tell when the cabooleat, or agreement, was made; yet I shall lay open something very extraordinary upon that subject, and will lead you, step by step, to the bloody scenes of Debi Sing. Whilst, therefore, Mr. Hastings was carrying on these transactions, he was carrying them on without any reference to the pretended object to which he afterwards applied them. It was an old, premeditated plan; and the money to be received could not have been designed for an exigency, because it was to be paid by monthly instalments. The case is the same with respect to the other cabooleats: it could not have been any momentary exigence which he had to provide for by these sums of money; they were paid regularly, period by period, as a constant, uniform income, to Mr. Hastings.

You find, then, Mr. Hastings first leaving this sum of money for a year and three months in the hands of Gunga Govind Sing; you find, that, when an exigence pressed him by the Mahrattas suddenly invading Bengal, and he was obliged to refer to his bribe-fund, he finds that fund empty, and that, in supplying money for this exigence, he takes a bond for two thirds of his own money and one third of the Company's. For, as I stated before, Mr. Larkins proves of one of these accounts, that he took, in the month of January, for this bribe-money, which, according to the principles he lays down, was the Company's money, three bonds as for money advanced from his own cash. Now this sum of three lacs, instead of being all his own, as it should appear to be in the month of January, when he took the bonds, or two thirds his own and one third the Company's, as he said in his letter of the 29th of November, turns out, by Mr. Larkins's account, paragraph 9, which I wish to mark to your Lordships, to be two thirds the Company's money and one third his own; and yet it is all confounded under bonds, as if the money had been his own. What can you say to this heroic sharper disguised under the name of a patriot, when you find him to be nothing but a downright cheat, first taking money under the Company's name, then taking their securities to him for their own money, and afterwards entering a false account of them, contradicting that by another account?—and God knows whether the third be true or false. These are not things that I am to make out by any conclusion of mine; here they are, made out by himself and Mr. Larkins, and, comparing them with his letter of the 27th, you find a gross fraud covered by a direct falsehood.

We have now done with Mr. Larkins's account of the bonds, and are come to the other species of Mr. Hastings's frauds, (for there is a great variety in them,) and first to Cheyt Sing's bribe. Mr. Larkins came to the knowledge of the bond-money through Gunga Govind Sing and through Cantoo Baboo. Of this bribe he was not in the secret originally, but was afterwards made a confidant in it; it was carried to him; and the account he gives of it I will state to your Lordships.

"The fourth sum stated in Mr. Hastings's account was the produce of sundry payments made to me by Sadamund, Cheyt Sing's buckshee, who either brought or sent the gold mohurs to my house, from whence they were taken by me to Mr. Croftes, either on the same night or early in the morning after: they were made at different times, and I well remember that the same people never came twice. On the 21st June, 1780, Mr. Hastings sent for me, and desired that I would take charge of a present that had been offered to him by Cheyt Sing's buckshee, under the plea of atoning for the opposition which he had made towards the payment of the extra subsidy for defraying part of the expenses of the war, but really in the hope of its inducing Mr. Hastings to give up that claim; with which view the present had first been offered. Mr. Hastings declared, that, although he would not take this for his own use, he would apply it to that of the Company, in removing Mr. Francis's objections to the want of a fund for defraying the extra expenses of Colonel Camac's detachment. On my return to the office, I wrote down the substance of what Mr. Hastings had said to me, and requested Mr. James Miller, my deputy, to seal it up with his own seal, and write upon it, that he had then done so at my request. He was no further informed of my motive for this than merely that it contained the substance of a conversation which had passed between me and another gentleman, which, in case that conversation should hereafter become the subject of inquiry, I wished to be able to adduce the memorandum then made of it, in corroboration of my own testimony; and although that paper has remained unopened to this hour, and notwithstanding that I kept no memorandum whatever of the substance thereof, yet, as I have wrote this representation under the most scrupulous adherence to what I conceived to be truth, should it ever become necessary to refer to this paper, I am confident that it will not be found to differ materially from the substance of this representation."

I forgot to mention, that, besides these two bonds, which Mr. Hastings declared to be the Company's, and one bond his own, that he slipped into the place of the bond of his own a much better, namely, a bond of November, which he never mentioned to the Company till the 22d of May; and this bond for current rupees 1,74,000, or sicca rupees 1,50,000, was taken for the payment stated in the paper No. 1 to have been made to Mr. Croftes on the 11th Aghan, 1187, which corresponds to the 23d of November, 1780. This is the Nuddea money, and this is all that you know of it; you know that this money, for which he had taken this other bond from the Company, was not his own neither, but bribes taken from the other provinces.

I am ashamed to be troublesome to your Lordships in this dry affair, but the detection of fraud requires a good deal of patience and assiduity, and we cannot wander into anything that can relieve the mind: if it was in my power to do it, I would do it. I wish, however, to call your Lordships' attention to this last bribe before I quit these bonds. Such is the confusion, so complicated, so intricate are these bribe accounts, that there is always something left behind, glean never so much from the paragraphs of Mr. Hastings and Mr. Larkins. "I could not bring them to account," says Mr. Larkins. "They were received before the 1st and 2d of October." Why does not the running treasury account give an account of them? The Committee of the House of Commons examined whether the running treasury account had any such account of sums deposited. No such thing. They are said by Mr. Hastings to be deposited in June: they were not deposited in October, nor any account of them given till the January following. "These bonds," says he, "I could not enter as regular money, to be entered on the Company's account, or in any public way, until I had had an order of the Governor-General and Council." But why had not you an order of the Governor-General and Council? We are not calling on you, Mr. Larkins, for an account of your conduct: we are calling upon Mr. Hastings for an account of his conduct, and which he refers to you to explain. Why did not Mr. Hastings order you to carry them to the public account? "Because," says he, "there was no other way." Every one who knows anything of a treasury or public banking-place knows, that if any person brings money as belonging to the public, that the public accountant is bound, no doubt, to receive it and enter it as such. "But," says he, "I could not do it until the account could be settled, as between debtor and creditor: I did not do it till I could put on one side durbar charges, secret service, to such an amount, and balance that again with bonds to Mr. Hastings." That is, he could not make an entry regularly in the Company's books until Mr. Hastings had enabled him to commit one of the grossest frauds and violations of a public trust that ever was committed, by ordering that money of the Company's to be considered as his own, and a bond to be taken as a security for it from the Company, as if it was his own.

But to proceed with this deposit. What is the substance of Mr. Larkins's explanation of it? The substance of this explanation is, that here was a bribe received by Mr. Hastings from Cheyt Sing, guarded with such scrupulous secrecy, that it was not carried to the house of Mr. Croftes, who was to receive it finally, but to the house of Mr. Larkins, as a less suspected place; and that it was conveyed in various sums, no two people ever returning twice with the various payments which made up that sum of 23,000l. or thereabouts. Now do you want an instance of prevarication and trickery in an account? If any person should inquire whether 23,000l. had been paid by Cheyt Sing to Mr. Hastings, there was not any one man living, or any person concerned in the transaction, except Mr. Larkins, who received it, that could give an account of how much he received, or who brought it. As no two people are ever his confidants in the same transaction in Mr. Hastings's accounts, so here no two people are permitted to have any share whatever in bringing the several fragments that make up this sum. This bribe, you might imagine, would have been entered by Mr. Larkins to some public account, at least to the fraudulent account of Mr. Hastings. No such thing. It was never entered till the November following. It was not entered till Mr. Francis had left Calcutta. All these corrupt transactions were carried on privately by Mr. Hastings alone, without any signification to his colleagues of his carrying on this patriotic traffic, as he called it. Your Lordships will also consider both the person who employs such a fraudulent accountant, and his ideas of his duty in his office. These are matters for your Lordships' grave determination; but I appeal to you, upon the face of these accounts, whether you ever saw anything so gross,—and whether any man could be daring enough to attempt to impose upon the credulity of the weakest of mankind, much more to impose upon such a court as this, such accounts as these are.