stings; and for that purpose he had early qualified himself by the
production to your Committee of his powers of agency. The ignorance in
which Mr. Hastings had left his agent was the more striking, because he
must have been morally certain, that, if his conduct in these points
should have escaped animadversion from the Court of Directors, it must
become an object of Parliamentary inquiry; for, in his letter of the
15th [16th?] of December, 1782, to the Court of Directors, he expressly
mentions his fears that those Parliamentary inquiries might be thought
to have extorted from him the confessions which he had made.

Your Committee, however, entering on a more strict examination
concerning the two lacs of rupees, which Mr. Hastings declares he had no
right to take, but had taken from some person then unknown, Major Scott
recollected that Mr. Hastings had, in a letter of the 7th of December,
1782, (in which he refers to some former letter,) acquainted him with
the name of the person from whom he had received these two lacs of
rupees, mentioned in the minute of June, 1780. It turned out to be the
Rajah of Benares, the unfortunate Cheyt Sing.

In the single instance in which Mr. Scott seemed to possess intelligence
in this matter, he is preferred to the Court of Directors. Under their
censure as Mr. Hastings was, and as he felt himself to be, for not
informing them of the channel in which he received that money, he
perseveres obstinately and contemptuously to conceal it from them;
though he thought fit to intrust his agent with the secret.

Your Committee were extremely struck with this intelligence. They were
totally unacquainted with it, when they presented to the House the
Supplement to their Second Report, on the affairs of Cheyt Sing. A gift
received by Mr. Hastings from the Rajah of Benares gave rise in their
minds to serious reflections on the condition of the princes of India
subjected to the British authority. Mr. Hastings was, at the very time
of his receiving this gift, in the course of making on the Rajah of
Benares a series of demands, unfounded and unjustifiable, and constantly
growing in proportion as they were submitted to. To these demands the
Rajah of Benares, besides his objections in point of right, constantly
sat up a plea of poverty. Presents from persons who hold up poverty as a
shield against extortion can scarcely in any case be considered as
gratuitous, whether the plea of poverty be true or false