The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume X Part 14

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, n.o.bly, 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 a.s.sertion 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 circ.u.mstance 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 a.s.surance that such a proposal would receive the acquiescence of the board; but I knew that it would not pa.s.s without opposition, and it would have become public, which might have defeated its purpose. Convinced of the necessity of the expedient, and a.s.sured 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 circ.u.mstance 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 subst.i.tuted 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 subst.i.tutes 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 Lords.h.i.+ps.

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 dest.i.tute 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 pa.s.sed 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 grat.i.tude 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 Lords.h.i.+ps will be pleased incidentally to remark the circ.u.mstance of his condition of life and his fortune, to which he appeals, and upon account of which he desires this money. Your Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 pa.s.sed through my hands. The three sums for which bonds were granted were in like manner paid to the Company's treasury, without pa.s.sing 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s for a candid interpretation of my actions,--and a.s.sume the freedom to add, that I think myself, on such a subject, on such _an occasion_, ent.i.tled 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 circ.u.mstance 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 Lords.h.i.+ps will observe that he thinks it his absolute duty (and I wish to press this upon your Lords.h.i.+ps, 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 ent.i.tled 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 ent.i.tled to their confidence and trust. If any of your Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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, ent.i.tled 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 a.s.sorted.

Your Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 princ.i.p.ally 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.

"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, but which were unknown when my letter was written, and written in the necessary consequence of a promise made to that effect in a former letter to your Honorable Committee, dated 20th January last. However, to preclude the possibility of such reflections from affecting me, I have desired Mr. Larkins, who was privy to the whole transaction, to affix to the letter his affidavit of the date in which it was written. I own I feel most sensibly the mortification of being reduced to the necessity of using such precautions to guard my reputation from dishonor. If I had at any time possessed that degree of confidence from my immediate employers which they never withheld from the meanest of my predecessors, I should have disdained to use these attentions. How I have drawn on me a different treatment I know not; it is sufficient that I have not merited it. And in the course of a service of thirty-two years, and ten of these employed in maintaining the powers and discharging the duties of the first office of the British government in India, that honorable court ought to know whether I possess the integrity and honor which are the first requisites of such a station. If I wanted these, they have afforded me but too powerful incentives to suppress the information which I now convey to them through you, and to appropriate to my own use the sums which I have already pa.s.sed to their credit, by the unworthy and, pardon me, if I add, dangerous, reflections which they have pa.s.sed upon me for the first communication of this kind: and your own experience will suggest to you, that there are persons who would profit by such a warning.

"Upon the whole of these transactions, which to you, who are accustomed to view business in an official and regular light, may appear unprecedented, if not improper, I have but a few short remarks to suggest to your consideration.

"If I appear in any unfavorable light by these transactions, I resign the common and legal security of those who commit crimes or errors. I am ready to answer every particular question that may be put against myself, upon honor or upon oath.

"The sources from which these reliefs to the public service have come would never have yielded them to the Company publicly; and the exigencies of your service (exigencies created by the exposition of your affairs, and faction in your councils) required those supplies.

"I could have concealed them, had I had a wrong motive, from yours and the public eye forever; and I know that the difficulties to which a spirit of injustice may subject me for my candor and avowal are greater than any possible inconvenience that could have attended the concealment, except the dissatisfaction of my own mind. These difficulties are but a few of those which I have suffered in your service. The applause of my own breast is my surest reward, and was the support of my mind in meeting them. Your applause, and that of my country, are my next wish in life."

Your Lords.h.i.+ps will observe at the end of this letter, that this man declares his first applause to be from his own breast, and that he next wishes to have the applause of his employers. But reversing this, and taking their applause first, let us see on what does he ground his hope of their applause? Was it on his former conduct? No: for he says that conduct had repeatedly met with their disapprobation. Was it upon the confidence which he knew they had in him? No: for he says they gave more of their confidence to the meanest of his predecessors. Observe, my Lords, the style of insolence he constantly uses with regard to all mankind. Lord Clive was his predecessor, Governor Cartier was his predecessor, Governor Verelst was his predecessor: every man of them as good as himself: and yet he says the Directors had given "more of their confidence to the _meanest_ of his predecessors." But what was to ent.i.tle him to their applause? A clear and full explanation of the bribes he had taken. Bribes was to be the foundation of their confidence in him, and the clear explanation of them was to ent.i.tle him to their applause! Strange grounds to build confidence upon!--the rotten ground of corruption, accompanied with the infamy of its avowal! Strange ground to expect applause!--a discovery which was no discovery at all!

Your Lords.h.i.+ps have heard this discovery, which I have not taken upon me to state, but have read his own letter on the occasion. Has there, at this moment, any light broken in upon you concerning this matter?

But what does he say to the Directors? He says, "Upon the whole of these transactions, which to you, who are accustomed to view business in an official and regular light, may appear unprecedented, if not improper, I have but a few short remarks to suggest to your consideration." He looks upon them and treats them as a set of low mechanical men, a set of low-born book-keepers, as base souls, who in an account call for explanation and precision. If there is no precision in accounts, there is nothing of worth in them. You see he himself is an eccentric accountant, a Pindaric book-keeper, an arithmetician in the clouds. "I know," he says, "what the Directors desire: but they are mean people; they are not of elevated sentiments; they are modest; they avoid ostentation in taking of bribes: I therefore am playing cups and b.a.l.l.s with them, letting them see a little glimpse of the bribes, then carrying them fairly away." Upon this he founds the applause of his own breast.

Populus me sibilat; at mihi plaudo Ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arca.

That private _ipse plaudo_ he may have in this business, which is a business of money; but the applause of no other human creature will he have for giving such an account as he admits this to be,--irregular, uncertain, problematical, and of which no one can make either head or tail. He despises us also, who are representatives of the people, and have amongst us all the regular officers of finance, for expecting anything like a regular account from him. He is hurt at it; he considers it as a cruel treatment of him; he says, "Have I deserved this treatment?" Observe, my Lords, he had met with no treatment, if treatment it may be called, from us, of the kind of which he complains.

The Court of Directors had, however, in a way shameful, abject, low, and pusillanimous, begged of him, as if they were his dependants, and not his masters, to give them some light into the account; they desire a receiver of money to tell from whom he received it, and how he applied it. He answers, They may be hanged for a parcel of mean, contemptible book-keepers, and that he will give them no account at all. He says, "If you sue me"--There is the point: he always takes security in a court of law. He considers his being called upon by these people, to whom he ought as a faithful servant to give an account, and to do which he was bound by an act of Parliament specially intrusting him with the administration of the revenues, as a gross affront. He adds, that he is ready to resign his defence, and to answer upon honor or upon oath.

Answering upon honor is a strange way they have got in India, as your Lords.h.i.+ps may see in the course of this inquiry. But he forgets, that, being the Company's servant, the Company may bring a bill in Chancery against him, and force him upon oath to give an account. He has not, however, given them light enough or afforded them sufficient ground for a fis.h.i.+ng bill in Chancery. Yet he says, "If you call upon me in a Chancery way, or by Common Law, I really will abdicate all forms, and give you some account." In consequence of this the Company did demand from him an account, regularly, and as fully and formally as if they had demanded it in a court of justice. He positively refused to give them any account whatever; and they have never, to this very day in which we speak, had any account that is at all clear or satisfactory. Your Lords.h.i.+ps will see, as I go through this scene of fraud, falsification, iniquity, and prevarication, that, in defiance of his promise, which promise they quote upon him over and over again, he has never given them any account of this matter.