He fairly avows the dominion he has over the Company's accounts; and
therefore, when he shall hereafter plead the accounts, we shall be able
to rebut that evidence, and say, "The Company's accounts are corrupted
by you, through your agent, Mr. Larkins; and we give no credit to them,
because you not only told the Company you could do so, but we can prove
that you have actually done it." What a strange medley of evasion,
pretended discovery, real concealment, fraud, and prevarication appears
in every part of this letter!

But admitting this letter to have been written upon the 22d of May, and
kept back to the 16th of December, you would imagine that during all
that interval of time he would have prepared himself to give some light,
some illustration of these dark and mysterious transactions, which
carried fraud upon the very face of them. Did he do so? Not at all. Upon
the 16th of December, instead of giving them some such clear accounts as
might have been expected, he falls into a violent passion for their
expecting them; he tells them it would be dangerous; and he tells them
they knew who had profited by these transactions: thus, in order to
strike terror into their breasts, hinting at some frauds which they had
practised or protected. What weight this may have had with them I know
not; but your Lordships will expect in vain, that Mr. Hastings, after
giving four accounts, if any one of which is true, the other three must
necessarily be false,--after having thrown the Company's accounts into
confusion, and being unable to tell, as he says himself, why he did
so,--will at last give some satisfaction to the Directors, who
continued, in a humble, meek way, giving him hints that he ought to do
it.--You have heard nothing yet but the consequences of their refusing
to give him the present of a hundred thousand pounds, which he had taken
from the Nabob. They did right to refuse it to him; they did wrong to
take it to themselves.

We now find Mr. Hastings on the river Ganges, in September, 1784,--that
Ganges whose purifying water expiates so many sins of the Gentoos, and
which, one would think, would have washed Mr. Hastings's hands a little
clean of bribery, and would have rolled down its golden sands like
another Pactolus. Here we find him discovering another of his bribes.
This was a bribe taken upon totally a different principle, according to
his own avowal: it is a bribe not pretended to be received for the use
of the Com