so ready in knowing all the resources by
which sinister emolument may be made and concealed, and which, under
pretences of public good, may be transferred into the pocket of him who
uses those pretences. He is resolved, if he is innocent, that his
innocence shall not proceed from ignorance. He well knows the ways of
falsifying the Company's accounts; he well knows the necessities of the
natives, and he knows that by paying a part of their dues they will be
ready to give an acquittance of the whole. These are parts of Mr.
Hastings's knowledge of which your Lordships will see he also well
knows how to avail himself.

But you would expect, when he reduced the allowance to sixteen lac, and
took credit to himself as if he had done the thing which he professed,
and had argued from his rigor and cruelty his strict and literal
obedience to the Company, that he had in reality done it. The very
reverse: for it will be in proof, that, after he had pretended to reduce
the Company's allowance, he continued it a twelvemonth from the day in
which he said he had entirely executed it, to the amount of 90,000_l._,
and entered a false account of the suppression in the Company's
accounts; and when he has taken a credit as under pretence of reducing
that allowance, he paid 90,000_l._ more than he ought. Can you, then,
have a doubt, after all these false pretences, after all this fraud,
fabrication, and suppression which he made use of, that that 90,000_l._,
of which he kept no account and transmitted no account, was money given
to himself for his own private use and advantage?

This is all that I think necessary to state to your Lordships upon this
monstrous part of the arrangement; and therefore, from his rigorous
obedience in cases of cruelty, and, where control was directed, from his
total disobedience, and from his choice of persons, from his suppression
of the accounts that ought to have been produced, and falsifying the
accounts that were kept, there arises a strong inference of corruption.
When your Lordships see all this in proof, your Lordships will justify
me in saying that there never was (taking every part of the arrangement)
such a direct, open violation of any trust.--I shall say no more with
regard to the appointment of Munny Begum.

My Lords, here ended the first scene, and here ends that body of
presumption arising from the transaction and inherent in it. My Lords,
the next scene that I am to bring before you is the posi