Chapter XII: Part 12

I have shown the impossibility of the Company's having intended to authorize such a revenue, much less such a constitution of it as Mr. Hastings has drawn from the very prohibitions of bribery, and such an exchequer as he has formed upon the principles I have stated. You will not dishonor the legislature or the Company, be it what it may, by thinking that either of them could give any sanction to it. Indeed, you will not think that such a device could ever enter into the head of any rational man. You are, then, to judge whether it is not a device to cover guilt, to prevent detection by destroying the means of it; and at the same time your Lordships will judge whether the evidence we bring you to prove that revenue is a mere pretext be not stronger than the strange, absurd reasons which he has produced for forming this new plan of an exchequer of bribery.

My Lords, I am now going to read to you a letter in which Mr. Hastings declares his opinion upon the operation of the act, which he now has found the means, as he thinks, of evading. My Lords, I will tell you, to save you a good deal of reading, that there was certain prize-money given by Sujah ul Dowlah to a body of the Company's troops serving in the field,--that this prize-money was to be distributed among them; but upon application being made to Mr. Hastings for his opinion and sanction in the distribution, Mr. Hastings at first seemed inclined to give way to it, but afterwards, upon reading and considering the act of Parliament, before he allowed the soldiery to receive this public donation, he thus describes his opinion of the operation of the act.

_Extract of a Letter from Mr. Hastings to Colonel Champion, 31 August, 1774._

"Upon a reference to the new act of Parliament, I was much disappointed and sorry to find that our intentions were entirely defeated by a clause in the act, (to be in force after the 1st of August, 1774,) which divests us of the power to grant, and expressly prohibits the army to receive, the Nabob's intended donation. Agreeable to the positive sense of this clause, notwithstanding it is expressed individually, there is not a doubt but the army is included with all other persons in the prohibition from receiving presents or donations; a confirmation of which is, that in the clause of exceptions, wherein 'counsellors-at-law, physicians, surgeons, and chaplains are permitted to receive the fees annexed to their profession,' no mention whatever is made of any latitude given to the army, or any circumstances wherein it would be allowable for them to receive presents.... This unlucky discovery of an exclusion by act of Parliament, which admits of no abatement or evasion wherever its authority extends, renders a revisal of our proceedings necessary, and leaves no option to our decision. It is not like the ordinances of the Court of Directors, where a favorable construction may be put, and some room is left for the interposition of the authority vested in ourselves,--but positive and decisive, admitting neither of refinement nor misconstruction. I should be happy, if in this instance a method could be devised of setting the act aside, which I should most willingly embrace; but, in my opinion, an opposition would be to incur the penalty."

* * * * *

Your Lordships see, Mr. Hastings considered this act to be a most unlucky discovery: indeed, as long as it remained in force, it would have been unlucky for him, because it would have destroyed one of the principal sources of his illegal profits. Why does he consider it unlucky? Because it admits of no reservation, no exception, no refinement whatever, but is clear, positive, decisive. Now in what case was it that Mr. Hastings made this determination? In the case of a donation publicly offered to an army serving in the field by a prince then independent of the Company. If ever there was a circumstance in which any refinement, any favorable construction of the act could be used, it was in favor of a body of men serving in the field, fighting for their country, spilling their blood for it, suffering all the inconveniences of that climate. It was undoubtedly voluntarily offered to them by the party, in the height of victory, and enriched by the plunder of whole provinces. I believe your Lordships will agree with me, that, if any relaxation, any evasion, of an act of Parliament could be allowed, if the intention of the legislature could for a moment be trifled with, or supposed for a moment doubtful, it was in this instance; and yet, upon the rigor of the act, Mr. Hastings refuses that army the price of their blood, money won solely almost by their arms for a prince who had acquired millions by their bravery, fidelity, and sufferings. This was the case in which Mr. Hastings refused a public donation to the army; and from that day to this they have never received it.

If the receipt of this public donation could be thus forbidden, whence has Mr. Hastings since learned that he may privately take money, and take it not only from princes, and persons in power, and abounding in wealth, but, as we shall prove, from persons in a comparative degree of penury and distress? that he could take it from persons in office and trust, whose power gave them the means of ruining the people for the purpose of enabling themselves to pay it? Consider in what a situation the Company must be, if the Governor-General can form such a secret exchequer of direct bribes, given _eo nomine_ as bribes, and accepted as such, by the parties concerned in the transaction, to be discovered only by himself, and with only the inward reservation that I have spoken of.

In the first place, if Mr. Hastings should die without having made a discovery of all his bribes, or if any other servant of the Company should imitate his example without his heroic good intentions in doing such villanous acts, how is the Company to recover the bribe-money? The receivers need not divulge it till they think fit; and the moment an informer comes, that informer is ruined. He comes, for instance, to the Governor-General and Council, and charges, say, not Mr. Hastings, but the head of the Board of Revenue, with receiving a bribe. "Receive a bribe? So I did; but it was with an intention of applying it to the Company's service. There I nick the informer: I am beforehand with him: the bribe is sanctified by my inward jesuitical intention. I will make a merit of it with the Company. I have received 40,000_l._ as a bribe; there it is for you: I am acquitted; I am a meritorious servant: let the informer go and seek his remedy as he can." Now, if an informer is once instructed that a person who receives bribes can turn them into merit, and take away his action from him, do you think that you ever will or can discover any one bribe? But what is still worse, by this method disclose but one bribe, and you secure all the rest that you possibly can receive upon any occasion. For instance, strong report prevails that a bribe of 40,000_l._ has been given, and the receiver expects that information will be laid against him. He acknowledges that he has received a bribe of 40,000_l._, but says that it was for the service of the Company, and that it is carried to their account. And thus, by stating that he has taken some money which he has accounted for, but concealing from whom that money came, which is exactly Mr. Hastings's case, if at last an information should be laid before the Company of a specific bribe having been received of 40,000_l._, it is said by the receiver, "Lord! this is the 40,000_l._ I told you of: it is broken into fragments, paid by instalments; and you have taken it and put it into your own coffers."

Again, suppose him to take it through the hand of an agent, such as Gunga Govind Sing, and that this agent, who, as we have lately discovered, out of a bribe of 40,000_l._, which Mr. Hastings was to have received, kept back half of it, falls into their debt like him: I desire to know what the Company can do in such a case. Gunga Govind Sing has entered into no covenants with the Company. There is no trace of his having this money, except what Mr. Hastings chooses to tell. If he is called upon to refund it to the Company, he may say he never received it, that he was never ordered to extort this money from the people; or if he was under any covenant not to take money, he may set up this defence: "I am forbidden to receive money; and I will not make a declaration which will subject me to penalties": or he may say in India, before the Supreme Court, "I have paid the bribe all to Mr. Hastings"; and then there must be a bill and suit there, a bill and suit here, and by that means, having one party on one side the water and the other party on the other, the Company may never come to a discovery of it. And that in fact this is the way in which one of his great bribe-agents has acted I shall prove to your Lordships by evidence.

Mr. Hastings had squeezed out of a miserable country a bribe of 40,000_l._, of which he was enabled to bring to the account of the Company only 20,000_l._, and of which we should not even have known the existence, if the inquiries pursued with great diligence by the House of Commons had not extorted the discovery: and even now that we know the fact, we can never get at the money; the Company can never receive it; and before the House had squeezed out of him that some such money had been received, he never once told the Court of Directors that his black bribe-agent, whom he recommended to their service, had cheated both them and him of 20,000_l._ out of the fund of the bribe-revenue. If it be asked, Where is the record of this? Record there is none. In what office is it entered? It is entered in no office; it is mentioned as privately received for the Company's benefit: and you shall now further see what a charming office of receipt and account this new exchequer of Mr. Hastings's is.

For there is another and a more serious circumstance attending this business. Every one knows, that, by the law of this, and, I believe, of every country, any money which is taken illegally from any person, as every bribe or sum of money extorted or paid without consideration is, belongs to the person who paid it, and he may bring his action for it, and recover it. Then see how the Company stands. The Company receives a bribe of 40,000_l._ by Mr. Hastings; it is carried to its account; it turns bribery into a revenue; it sanctifies it. In the mean time, the man from whom this money is illegally taken sues Mr. Hastings. Must not he recover of Mr. Hastings? Then, if so, must not Mr. Hastings recover it again from the Company? The Company undoubtedly is answerable for it. And here is a revenue which every man who has paid it may drag out of the treasury again. Mr. Hastings's donations of his bribes to the treasury are liable to be torn from it at pleasure by every man who gives the money. First it may be torn from him who receives it; and then he may recover it from the treasury, to which he has given it.

But admitting that the taking of bribes can be sanctified by their becoming the property of the Company, it may still be asked, For what end and purpose has the Company covenanted with Mr. Hastings that money taken extorsively shall belong to the Company? Is it that satisfaction and reparation may be awarded against the said Warren Hastings to the said Company for their own benefit? No: it is for the benefit of the injured persons; and it is to be carried to the Company's account, "but in trust, nevertheless, and to the intent that the said Company may and do render and pay over the moneys received or recovered by them to the parties injured or defrauded, which the said Company accordingly hereby agree and covenant to do." Now here is a revenue to be received by Mr. Hastings for the Company's use, applied at his discretion to that use, and which the Company has previously covenanted to restore to the persons that are injured and damaged. This is a revenue which is to be torn away by the action of any person,--a revenue which they must return back to the person complaining, as they in justice ought to do: for no nation ever avowed making a revenue out of bribery and peculation. They are, then, to restore it back again. But how can they restore it? Mr. Hastings has applied it: he has given it in presents to princes,--laid it out in budgeros,--in pen, ink, and wax,--in salaries to secretaries: he has laid it out just in any way he pleased: and the India Company, who have covenanted to restore all this money to the persons from whom it came, are deprived of all means of performing so just a duty. Therefore I dismiss the idea that any man so acting could have had a good intention in his mind: the supposition is too weak, senseless, and absurd. It was only in a desperate cause that he made a desperate attempt: for we shall prove that he never made a disclosure without thinking that a discovery had been previously made or was likely to be made, together with an exposure of all the circumstances of his wicked and abominable concealment.

You will see the history of this new scheme of bribery, by which Mr. Hastings contrived by avowing some bribes to cover others, attempted to outface his delinquency, and, if possible, to reconcile a weak breach of the laws with a sort of spirited observance of them, and to become infamous for the good of his country.

The first appearance of this practice of bribery was in a letter of the 29th of November, 1780. The cause which led to the discovery was a dispute between him and Mr. Francis at the board, in consequence of a very handsome offer made by Mr. Hastings to the board relative to a measure proposed by him, to which he found one objection to be the money that it would cost. He made the most generous and handsome offer, as it stands upon record, that perhaps any man ever made,--namely, that he would defray the expense out of his own private cash, and that he had deposited with the treasurer two lac of rupees. This was in June, 1780, and Mr. Francis soon after returned to Europe. I need not inform your Lordships, that Mr. Hastings had before this time been charged with bribery and peculation by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis. He suspected that Mr. Francis, then going to Europe, would confirm this charge by the suspicious nature and circumstances of this generous offer; and this suspicion was increased by the connection which he supposed, and which we can prove he thought, Mr. Francis had with Cheyt Sing. Apprehending, therefore, that he might discover and bring the bribe to light some way or other, he resolved to anticipate any such discovery by declaring, upon the 29th of November, that this money was not his own. I will mention to your Lordships hereafter the circumstances of this money. He says, "My present reason for adverting to my conduct," (that is, his offer of two lac of rupees out of his own private cash for the Company's service, upon the 26th of June, 1780,) "on the occasion I have mentioned, is to obviate the false conclusions or purposed misrepresentations which may be made of it, either as an artifice of ostentation or as the effect of corrupt influence, by assuring you that the money, by whatever means it came into your possession, was not my own,--that I had myself no right to it, nor would or could have received it, but for the occasion, which prompted me to avail myself of the accidental means which were at that instant afforded me of accepting and converting it to the property and use of the Company: and with this brief apology I shall dismiss the subject."

My Lords, you see what an account Mr. Hastings has given of some obscure transaction by which he contradicts the record. For, on the 26th of June, he generously, nobly, full of enthusiasm for their service, offers to the Company money of his own. On the 29th of November he tells the Court of Directors that the money he offered on the former day was not his own,--that his assertion was totally false,--that the money was not his,--that he had no right to receive it,--and that he would not have received it, but for the occasion, which prompted him to avail himself of the accidental means which at that instant offered.

Such is the account sent by their Governor in India, acting as an accountant, to the Company,--a company with whom everything is matter of account. He tells them, indeed, that the sum he had offered was not his own,--that he had no right to it,--and that he would not have taken it, if he had not been greatly tempted by the occasion; but he never tells them by what means he came at it, the person from whom he received it, the occasion upon which he received it, (whether justifiable or not,) or any one circumstance under heaven relative to it. This is a very extraordinary account to give to the public of a sum which we find to be somewhere above twenty thousand pounds, taken by Mr. Hastings in some way or other. He set the Company blindly groping in the dark by the very pretended light, the ignis-fatuus, which he held out to them: for at that time all was in the dark, and in a cloud: and this is what Mr. Hastings calls _information_ communicated to the Company on the subject of these bribes.

You have heard of obscurity illustrated by a further obscurity,--_obscurum per obscurius_. He continues to tell them,--"Something of affinity to this anecdote may appear in the first aspect of another transaction, which I shall proceed to relate, and of which it is more immediately my duty to inform you." He then tells them that he had contrived to give a sum of money to the Rajah of Berar, and the account he gives of that proceeding is this. "We had neither money to spare, nor, in the apparent state of that government in its relation to ours, would it have been either prudent or consistent with our public credit to have afforded it. It was, nevertheless, my decided opinion that some aid should be given, not less as a necessary relief than as an indication of confidence, and a return for the many instances of substantial kindness which we had within the course of the two last years experienced from the government of Berar. I had an assurance that such a proposal would receive the acquiescence of the board; but I knew that it would not pass without opposition, and it would have become public, which might have defeated its purpose. Convinced of the necessity of the expedient, and assured of the sincerity of the government of Berar, from evidences of stronger proof to me than I could make them appear to the other members of the board, I resolved to adopt it and take the entire responsibility of it upon myself. In this mode a less considerable sum would suffice. I accordingly caused three lac of rupees to be delivered to the minister of the Rajah of Berar resident in Calcutta. He has transmitted it to Cuttack. Two thirds of this sum I have raised by my own credit, and shall charge it in my official accounts; the other third I have supplied from the cash in my hands belonging to the Honorable Company."

Your Lordships see in this business another mode which he has of accounting with the Company, and informing them of his bribe. He begins his account of this transaction by saying that it has something of affinity to the last anecdote,--meaning the account of the first bribe. An anecdote is made a head of an account; and this, I believe, is what none of your Lordships ever have heard of before,--and I believe it is yet to be learned in this commercial nation, a nation of accurate commercial account. The account he gives of the first is an anecdote; and what is his account of the second? A relation of an anecdote: not a near relation, but something of affinity,--a remote relation, cousin three or four times removed, of the half-blood, or something of that kind, to this anecdote: and he never tells them any circumstance of it whatever of any kind, but that it has some affinity to the former anecdote. But, my Lords, the thing which comes to some degree of clearness is this, that he did give money to the Rajah of Berar. And your Lordships will be so good as to advert carefully to the proportions in which he gave it. He did give him two lac of rupees of money raised by his own credit, his own money; and the third he advanced out of the Company's money in his hands. He might have taken the Company's money undoubtedly, fairly, openly, and held it in his hands, for a hundred purposes; and therefore he does not tell them that even that third was money he had obtained by bribery and corruption. No: he says it is money of the Company's, which he had in his hand. So that you must get through a long train of construction before you ascertain that this sum was what it turns out to be, a bribe, which he retained for the Company. Your Lordships will please to observe, as I proceed, the nature of this pretended generosity in Mr. Hastings. He is always generous in the same way. As he offered the whole of his first bribe as his own money, and afterward acknowledged that no part of it was his own, so he is now generous again in this latter transaction,--in which, however, he shows that he is neither generous nor just. He took the first money without right, and he did not apply it to the very service for which it was pretended to be taken. He then tells you of another anecdote, which, he says, has an affinity to that anecdote, and here he is generous again. In the first he appears to be generous and just, because he appears to give his own money, which he had a right to dispose of; then he tells you he is neither generous nor just, for he had taken money he had no right to, and did not apply it to the service for which he pretended to have received it. And now he is generous again, because he gives two lac of his own money,--and just, because he gives one lac which belonged to the Company; but there is not an idea suggested from whom he took it.

But to proceed, my Lords. In this letter he tells you he had given two thirds his own money and one third the Company's money. So it stood upon the 29th of November, 1780. On the 5th of January following we see the business take a totally different turn; and then Mr. Hastings calls for three Company's bonds, upon two different securities, antedated to the 1st and 2d of October, for the three lac, which he before told them was two thirds his own money and one third the Company's. He now declares the whole of it to be his own, and he thus applies by letter to the board, of which he himself was a majority.

"Honorable Sir and Sirs,--Having had occasion to disburse the sum
of three lacs of sicca rupees on account of secret services, which
having been advanced from my own private cash, I request that the
same may be repaid to me in the following manner.

"A bond to be granted me upon the terms of the second loan, bearing
date from 1st October, for one lac of sicca rupees.

"A bond to be granted me upon the terms of the first loan, bearing
date from 1st October, for one lac of sicca rupees."

"A bond to be granted me upon the terms of the first loan, bearing
date from the 2d October, for one lac of sicca rupees."

Here are two accounts, one of which must be directly and flatly false: for he could not have given two thirds his own, and have supplied the other third from money of the Company's, and at the same time have advanced the whole as his own. He here goes the full length of the fraud: he declares that it is all his own,--so much his own that he does not trust the Company with it, and actually takes their bonds as a security for it, bearing an interest to be paid to him when he thinks proper.

Thus it remained from the 5th of January, 1781, till 16th December, 1782, when this business takes another turn, and in a letter of his to the Company these bonds become all their own. All the money advanced is now, all of it, the Company's money. First he says two thirds were his own; next, that the whole is his own; and the third account is, that the whole is the Company's, and he will account to them for it.

Now he has accompanied this account with another very curious one. For when you come to look into the particulars of it, you will find there are three bonds declared to be the Company's bonds, and which refer to the former transactions, namely, the money for which he had taken the bonds; but when you come to look at the numbers of them, you will find that one of the three bonds which he had taken as his own disappears, and another bond, of another date, and for a much larger sum, is substituted in its place, of which he had never mentioned anything whatever. So that, taking his first account, that two thirds is his own money, then that it is all his own, in the third that it is all the Company's money, by a fourth account, given in a paper describing the three bonds, you will find that there is one lac which he does not account for, but substitutes in its place a bond before taken as his own. He sinks and suppresses one bond, he gives two bonds to the Company, and to supply the want of the third, which he suppresses, he brings forward a bond for another sum, of another date, which he had never mentioned before. Here, then, you have four different accounts: if any one of them is true, every one of the other three is totally false. Such a system of cogging, such a system of fraud, such a system of prevarication, such a system of falsehood, never was, I believe, before exhibited in the world.

In the first place, why did he take bonds at all from the Company for the money that was their own? I must be cautious how I charge a legal crime. I will not charge it to be forgery, to take a bond from the Company for money which was their own. He was employed to make out bonds for the Company, to raise money on their credit. He pretends he lent them a sum of money, which was not his to lend: but he gives their own money to them as his own, and takes a security for it. I will not say that it is a forgery, but I am sure it is an offence as grievous, because it is as much a cheat as a forgery, with this addition to it, that the person so cheating is in a trust; he violates that trust, and in so doing he defrauds and falsifies the whole system of the Company's accounts.

I have only to show what his own explanation of all these actions was, because it supersedes all observation of mine. Hear what prevaricating guilt says for the falsehood and delusion which had been used to cover it; and see how he plunges deeper and deeper upon every occasion. This explanation arose out of another memorable bribe, which I must now beg leave to state to your Lordships.

About the time of the receipt of the former bribes, good fortune, as good things seldom come singly, is kind to him; and when he went up and had nearly ruined the Company's affairs in Oude and Benares, he received a present of 100,000_l._ sterling, or thereabouts. He received bills for it in September, 1781, and he gives the Company an account of it in January, 1782. Remark in what manner the account of this money was given, and the purposes for which he intends to apply it. He says, in this letter, "I received the offer of a considerable sum of money, both on the Nabob's part and that of his ministers, as a present to myself, not to the Company: I accepted it without hesitation, and gladly, being entirely destitute both of means and credit, whether for your service or the relief of my own necessities." My Lords, upon this you shall hear a comment, made by some abler persons than me. This donation was not made in species, but in bills upon the house of Gopaul Doss, who was then a prisoner in the hands of Cheyt Sing. After mentioning that he took this present for the Company, and for their exigencies, and partly for his own necessities, and in consequence of the distress of both, he desires the Company, in the moment of this their greatest distress, to award it to him, and therefore he ends, "If you should adjudge the deposit to me, I shall consider it as the most honorable approbation and reward of my labors: and I wish to owe my fortune to your bounty. I am now in the fiftieth year of my life: I have passed thirty-one years in the service of the Company, and the greatest part of that time in employments of the highest trust. My conscience allows me boldly to claim the merit of zeal and integrity; nor has fortune been unpropitious to their exertions. To these qualities I bound my pretensions. I shall not repine, if you shall deem otherwise of my services; nor ought your decision, however it may disappoint my hope of a retreat adequate to the consequence and elevation of the office which I now possess, to lessen my gratitude for having been so long permitted to hold it, since it has at least enabled me to lay up a provision with which I can be contented in a more humble station."

And here your Lordships will be pleased incidentally to remark the circumstance of his condition of life and his fortune, to which he appeals, and upon account of which he desires this money. Your Lordships will remember that in 1773 he said, (and this I stated to you from himself,) that, if he held his then office for a very few years, he should be enabled to lay by an ample provision for his retreat. About nine years after that time, namely, in the month of January, 1782, he finds himself rather pinched with want, but, however, not in so bad a way but that the holding of his office had enabled him to lay up a provision with which he could be contented in a more humble station. He wishes to have affluence; he wishes to have dignity; he wishes to have consequence and rank: but he allows that he has competence. Your Lordships will see afterwards how miserably his hopes were disappointed: for the Court of Directors, receiving this letter from Mr. Hastings, did declare, that they could not give it to him, because the act had ordered that "no fees of office, perquisites, emoluments, or advantages whatsoever, should be accepted, received, or taken by such Governor-General and Council, or any of them, in any manner or on any account or pretence whatsoever"; "and as the same act further directs, 'that no Governor-General, or any of the Council, shall directly take, accept, or receive, of or from any person or persons, in any manner or on any account whatsoever, any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward, pecuniary or otherwise, or any promise or engagement for any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward,' we cannot, were we so inclined, decree the amount of this present to the Governor-General. And it is further enacted, 'that any such present, gift, gratuity, donation, or reward, accepted, taken, or received, shall be deemed and construed to have been received to and for the sole use of the Company.'" And therefore they resolved, most unjustly and most wickedly, to keep it to themselves. The act made it in the first instance the property of the Company, and they would not give it him. And one should think this, with his own former construction of the act, would have made him cautious of taking bribes. You have seen what weight it had with him to stop the course of bribes which he was in such a career of taking in every place and with both hands.

Your Lordships have now before you this hundred thousand pounds, disclosed in a letter from Patna, dated the 20th January, 1782. You find mystery and concealment in every one of Mr. Hastings's discoveries. For (which is a curious part of it) this letter was not sent to the Court of Directors in their packet regularly, but transmitted by Major Fairfax, one of his agents, to Major Scott, another of his agents, to be delivered to the Company. Why was this done? Your Lordships will judge, from that circuitous mode of transmission, whether he did not thereby intend to leave some discretion in his agent to divulge it or not. We are told he did not; but your Lordships will believe that or not, according to the nature of the fact. If he had been anxious to make this discovery to the Directors, the regular way would have been to send his letter to the Directors immediately in the packet: but he sent it in a box to an agent; and that agent, upon due discretion, conveyed it to the Court of Directors. Here, however, he tells you nothing about the persons from whom he received this money, any more than he had done respecting the two former sums.

On the 2d of May following the date of this Patna letter he came down to Calcutta with a mind, as he himself describes it, greatly agitated. All his hope of plundering Benares had totally failed. The produce of the robbing of the Begums, in the manner your Lordships have heard, was all dissipated to pay the arrears of the armies: there was no fund left. He felt himself agitated and full of dread, knowing that he had been threatened with having his place taken from him several times, and that he might be called home to render an account. He had heard that inquiries had begun in a menacing form in Parliament; and though at that time Bengal was not struck at, there was a charge of bribery and peculation brought against the Governor of Madras. With this dread, with a mind full of anxiety and perturbation, he writes a letter, as he pretends, on the 22d of May, 1782. Your Lordships will remark, that, when he came down to Calcutta from his expedition up the country, he did not till the 22d of May give any account whatever of these transactions,--and that this letter, or pretended letter, of the 22d of May was not sent till the 16th of December following. We shall clearly prove that he had abundant means of sending it, and by various ways, before the 16th of December, 1782, when he inclosed in another letter that of the 22d of May. This is the letter of discovery; this is the letter by which his breast was to be laid open to his employers, and all the obscurity of his transactions to be elucidated. Here are indeed new discoveries, but they are like many new-discovered lands, exceedingly inhospitable, very thinly inhabited, and producing nothing to gratify the curiosity of the human mind.

This letter is addressed to the Honorable the Court of Directors, dated Fort William, 22d May, 1782. He tells them he had promised to account for the ten lacs of rupees which he had received, and this promise, he says, he now performs, and that he takes that opportunity of accounting with them likewise for several other sums which he had received. His words are,--

"This promise I now perform, and, deeming it consistent with the spirit of it, I have added such other sums as have been occasionally converted to the Company's property through my means, in consequence of the like original destination. Of the second of these sums you have already been advised in a letter which I had the honor to address the Honorable Court of Directors, dated 29th November, 1780. Both this and the third article were paid immediately to the treasury, by my order to the sub-treasurer to receive them on the Company's account, but never passed through my hands. The three sums for which bonds were granted were in like manner paid to the Company's treasury, without passing through my hands, but their _application_ was not specified. The sum of 50,000 current rupees was received while I was on my journey to Benares, and applied as expressed in the account.

"As to the manner in which these sums have been expended, the reference which I have made of it in the accompanying account, to the several accounts in which they are credited, renders any other specification of it unnecessary,--_besides_ that these accounts either have or will have received a much stronger authentication than any that I could give to mine."

I wish your Lordships to attend to the next paragraph, which is meant by him to explain why he took bribes at all,--why he took bonds for some of them, as moneys of his own, and not moneys of the Company,--why he entered some upon the Company's accounts, and why of the others he renders no account at all. Light, however, will beam upon you as we proceed.

"Why these sums were taken by me,--why they were, except the second, quietly transferred to the Company's use,--why bonds were taken for the first, and not for the rest,--might, were this matter exposed to the view of the public, furnish a variety of conjectures, to which it would be of little use to reply. Were your Honorable Court to question me on these points, I would answer, that the sums were taken for the Company's benefit, at times when the Company very much needed them,--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 could at this distance of time verify, and that I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest. I trust, Honorable Sirs, to your breasts for a candid interpretation of my actions,--and assume the freedom to add, that I think myself, on such a subject, on such _an occasion_, entitled to it."

Lofty, my Lords! You see, that, after the Directors had expected an explanation for so long a time, he says, "Why these sums were taken by me, and, except the second, quietly transferred to the Company's use, I cannot tell; why bonds were taken for the first, and not for the rest, I cannot tell: if this matter were exposed to view, it would furnish a variety of conjectures." Here is an account which is to explain the most obscure, the most mysterious, the most evidently fraudulent transactions. When asked how he came to take these bonds, how he came to use these frauds, he tells you he really does not know,--that he might have this motive for it, that he might have another motive for it,--that he wished to conceal it from public curiosity,--but, which is the most extraordinary, he is not quite sure that he had any motive for it at all, which his memory can trace. The whole of this is a period of a year and a half; and here is a man who keeps his account upon principles of whim and vagary. One would imagine he was guessing at some motive of a stranger. Why he came to take bonds for money not due to him, and why he enters some and not others,--he knows nothing of these things: he begs them not to ask about it, because it will be of no use. "You foolish Court of Directors may conjecture and conjecture on. You are asking me why I took bonds to myself for money of yours, why I have cheated you, why I have falsified my account in such a manner. I will not tell you."

In the satisfaction which he had promised to give them he neither mentions the persons, the times, the occasions, or motives for any of his actions. He adds, "I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest." For some purposes, he thought it necessary to use the most complicated and artful concealments; for some, he could not tell what his motives were; and for others, that it was mere carelessness. Here is the exchequer of bribery!--have I falsified any part of my original stating of it?--an exchequer in which the man who ought to pay receives, the man who ought to give security takes it, the man who ought to keep an account says he has forgotten; an exchequer in which oblivion was the remembrancer; and, to sum up the whole, an exchequer into the accounts of which it was useless to inquire. This is the manner in which the account of near two hundred thousand pounds is given to the Court of Directors. You can learn nothing in this business that is any way distinct, except a premeditated design of a concealment of his transactions. That is avowed.

But there is a more serious thing behind. Who were the instruments of his concealment? No other, my Lords, than the Company's public accountant. That very accountant takes the money, knowing it to be the Company's, and that it was only pretended to be advanced by Mr. Hastings for the Company's use. He sees Mr. Hastings make out bonds to himself for it, and Mr. Hastings makes him enter him as creditor, when in fact he was debtor. Thus he debauches the Company's accountant, and makes him his confederate. These fraudulent and corrupt acts, covered by false representations, are proved to be false not by collation with anything else, but false by a collation with themselves. This, then, is the account, and his explanation of it; and in this insolent, saucy, careless, negligent manner, a public accountant like Mr. Hastings, a man bred up a book-keeper in the Company's service, who ought to be exact, physically exact, in his account, has not only been vicious in his own account, but made the public accounts vicious and of no value.

But there is in this account another curious circumstance with regard to the deposit of this sum of money, to which he referred in his first paragraph of his letter of the 29th of November, 1780. He states that this deposit was made and passed into the hands of Mr. Larkins on the 1st of June. It did so; but it is not entered in the Company's accounts till November following. Now in all that intermediate space where was it? what account was there of it? It was entirely a secret between Mr. Larkins and Mr. Hastings, without a possibility of any one discovering any particular relative to it. Here is an account of two hundred thousand pounds received, juggled between the accountant and him, without a trace of it appearing in the Company's books. Some of those committees, to whom, for their diligence at least, I must say the public have some obligation, and in return for which they ought to meet with some indulgence, examining into all these circumstances, and having heard that Mr. Hastings had deposited a sum of money in the hands of the Company's sub-treasurer in the month of June, sent for the Company's books. They looked over those books, but they did not find the least trace of any such sum of money, and not any account of it: nor could there be, because it was not paid to the Company's account till the November following. The accountant had received the money, but never entered it from June till November. Then, at last, have we an account of it. But was it even then entered regularly upon the Company's accounts? No such thing: it is a deposit carried to the Governor-General's credit.

[_The entry of the several species in which this deposit was made
was here read from the Company's General Journal of 1780 and 1781._]

My Lords, when this account appears at last, when this money does emerge in the public accounts, whose is it? Is it the Company's? No: Mr. Hastings's. And thus, if, notwithstanding this obscure account in November, the Directors had claimed and called for this affinity to an anecdote,--if they had called for this anecdote and examined the account,--if they had said, "We observe here entered two lac and upwards; come, Mr. Hastings, let us see where this money is,"--they would find that it is Mr. Hastings's money, not the Company's; they would find that it is carried to his credit. In this manner he hands over this sum, telling them, on the 22d of May, 1782, that not only the bonds were a fraud, but the deposit was a fraud, and that neither bonds nor deposit did in reality belong to him. Why did he enter it at all? Then, afterwards, why did he not enter it as the Company's? Why make a false entry, to enter it as his own? And how came he, two years after, when he does tell you that it was the Company's and not his own, to alter the public accounts? But why did he not tell them at that time, when he pretends to be opening his breast to the Directors, from whom he received it, or say anything to give light to the Company respecting it? who, supposing they had the power of dispensing with an act of Parliament, or licensing bribery at their pleasure, might have been thereby enabled to say, "Here you ought to have received it,--there it might be oppressive and of dreadful example."

I have only to state, that, in this letter, which was pretended to be written on the 22d of May, 1782, your Lordships will observe that he thinks it his absolute duty (and I wish to press this upon your Lordships, because it will be necessary in a comparison which I shall have hereafter to make) to lay open all their affairs to them, to give them a full and candid explanation of his conduct, which he afterwards confesses he is not able to do. The paragraph has been just read to you. It amounts to this: "I have taken many bribes,--have falsified your accounts,--have reversed the principle of them in my own favor; I now discover to you all these my frauds, and think myself entitled to your confidence upon this occasion." Now all the principles of diffidence, all the principles of distrust, nay, more, all the principles upon which a man may be convicted of premeditated fraud, and deserve the severest punishment, are to be found in this case, in which he says he holds himself to be entitled to their confidence and trust. If any of your Lordships had a steward who told you he had lent you your own money, and had taken bonds from you for it, and if he afterwards told you that that money was neither yours nor his, but extorted from your tenants by some scandalous means, I should be glad to know what your Lordships would think of such a steward, who should say, "I will take the freedom to add, that I think myself, on such a subject, on such an occasion, entitled to your confidence and trust." You will observe his cavalier mode of expression. Instead of his exhibiting the rigor and severity of an accountant and a book-keeper, you would think that he had been a reader of sentimental letters; there is such an air of a novel running through the whole, that it adds to the ridicule and nausea of it: it is an oxymel of squills; there is something to strike you with horror for the villany of it, something to strike you with contempt for the fraud of it, and something to strike you with utter disgust for the vile and bad taste with which all these base ingredients are assorted.

Your Lordships will see, when the account which is subjoined to this unaccountable letter comes before you, that, though the Company had desired to know the channels through which he got those sums, there is not (except by a reference that appears in another place to one of the articles) one single syllable of explanation given from one end to the other, there is not the least glimpse of light thrown upon these transactions. But we have since discovered from whom he got these bribes; and your Lordships will be struck with horror, when you hear it.

I have already remarked to you, that, though this letter is dated upon the 22d of May, it was not dispatched for Europe till December following; and he gets Mr. Larkins, who was his agent and instrument in falsifying the Company's accounts, to swear that this letter was written upon the 22d of May, and that he had no opportunity to send it, but by the "Lively" in December. On the 16th of that month he writes to the Directors, and tells them that he is quite shocked to find he had no earlier opportunity of making this discovery, which he thought himself bound to make; though this discovery, respecting some articles of it, had now been delayed nearly two years, and though it since appears that there were many opportunities, and particularly by the "Resolution," of sending it. He was much distressed, and found himself in an awkward situation, from an apprehension that the Parliamentary inquiry, which he knew was at this time in progress, might have forced from him this notable discovery. He says, "I do not fear the consequences of any Parliamentary process." Indeed, he needed not to fear any Parliamentary inquiry, if it produced no further discovery than that which your Lordships have in the letter of the 22d of May, and in the accounts subjoined to it. He says, that "the delay is of no public consequence; but it has produced a situation which, with respect to myself, I regard as unfortunate, because it exposes me to the meanest imputation, from the occasion which the late Parliamentary inquiries have since furnished."

Now here is a very curious letter, that I wish to have read for some other reasons, which will afterwards appear, but principally at present for the purpose of showing you that he held it to be his duty and thought it to the last degree dishonorable not to give the Company an account of those secret bribes: he thought it would reflect upon him, and ruin his character forever, if this account did not come voluntarily from him, but was extorted by terror of Parliamentary inquiry. In this letter of the 16th December, 1782, he thus writes.