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 Nunduloll, 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 Govin 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 Nunduloll never did or had 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 lack. 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; viz. that the time of his tak ing 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 Assen 1187: the month of Assen 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 accomptant in England can be more accurately acquainted with the succession of months, than Mr. Larkins must have been with the

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comparative state of Bengal and English months. 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 accomptant 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 accomptant for being accurate, because you have thousands of them; but you justly blame a publick accomptant, 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 Sawun 1186 or 1779, but the receipt is said to be in Assen 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 Govin 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 Cheit 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 Cheit Sing long before he had this occasion for it. The fund lay in Gunga Govin 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 monies was some time in the year 1779: 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 Govin 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 twothirds 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 bribemoney, 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 lacks, 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, para

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graph 9, which I wish to mark to your lordships, to be twothirds 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 heroick 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 Cheit Sing's bribe. Mr. Larkins came to the knowledge of the bond-money through Gunga Govin 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, Cheit Sing's buxey, 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 Cheit Sing's buxey, 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