ned, has made a declaration to the
Court of Directors in the following terms: "Having had occasion to
disburse from my own cash many sums, which, though required to enable me
to execute the duties of my station, I have hitherto omitted to enter in
my public accounts, and my own fortune being unequal to so heavy a
charge, I have resolved to reimburse myself in a mode the most suitable
to the situation of your affairs, by charging the same in my Durbar
accounts of the present year, and crediting them by a sum _privately
received_, and appropriated to your service in the same manner with
other sums received on account of the Honorable Company, and already
carried to their account." That at the time of writing this letter the
said Warren Hastings had been in possession of the government of Fort
William about twelve years, with a clear salary, or avowed emoluments,
at no time less than twenty-five thousand pounds sterling a year,
exclusive of which all the principal expenses of his residence were paid
for by the Company. That, if the services mentioned by him were required
to enable him to execute the duties of his station, he ought not to have
omitted to enter them in his public accounts at the times when the
expenses were incurred. That, if it was true, as he affirms, that, when
he first engaged in these expenses, he had no intention to carry them to
the account of the Company, there was no subsequent change in his
situation which could justify his departing from that intention. That,
if his own fortune in the year 1784 was unequal to so heavy a charge,
the state of his fortune at any earlier period must have been still more
unequal to so heavy a charge. That the fact so asserted by the said
Warren Hastings leads directly to an inference palpably false and
absurd, viz., that, the longer a Governor-General holds that lucrative
office, the poorer he must become. That neither would the assertion, if
it were true, nor the inference, if it were admitted, justify the
conduct avowed by the said Warren Hastings in resolving to reimburse
himself out of the Company's property without their consent or
knowledge.--That the account transmitted in this letter is styled by
himself _an aggregate of a contingent account of twelve years_; that all
contingent accounts should be submitted to those who ought to have an
official control over them, at annual or other shorter periods, in order
that the expense already incurred may be checked and ex