th 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 Lordships 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 circumstance 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 Lordships 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 Lordships 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 genero