are
given entirely into his power. This is the way by which the Company are
to keep their own servants from falling into "the extremity of private
want." And the Company itself, in this pretended saving to their
treasury by the taking of bribes, lose more than the amount of the
bribes received. Wherever a bribe is given on one hand, there is a
balance accruing on the other. No man, who had any share in the
management of the Company's revenues, ever gave a bribe, who did not
either extort the full amount of it from the country, or else fall in
balance to the Company to that amount, and frequently both. In short,
Mr. Hastings never was guilty of corruption, that blood and rapine did
not follow; he never took a bribe, pretended to be for their benefit,
but the Company's treasury was proportionably exhausted by it.

And now was this scandalous and ruinous traffic in bribes brought to
light by the Court of Directors? No: we got it in the House of Commons.
These bribes appear to have been taken at various times and upon various
occasions; and it was not till his return from Patna, in February, 1782,
that the first communication of any of them was made to the Court of
Directors. Upon the receipt of this letter, the Court of Directors
wrote back to him, requiring some further explanation upon the subject.
No explanation was given, but a communication of other bribes was made
in his letter, said to be written in May of the same year, but not
dispatched to Europe till the December following. This produced another
requisition from the Directors for explanation. And here your Lordships
are to observe that this correspondence is never in the way of letters
written and answers given; but he and the Directors are perpetually
playing at hide-and-seek with each other, and writing to each other at
random: Mr. Hastings making a communication one day, the Directors
requiring an explanation the next; Mr. Hastings giving an account of
another bribe on the third day, without giving any explanation of the
former. Still, however, the Directors are pursuing their chase. But it
was not till they learned that the committees of the House of Commons
(for committees of the House of Commons had then some weight) were
frowning upon them for this collusion with Mr. Hastings, that at last
some honest men in the Direction were permitted to have some ascendency,
and that a proper letter was prepared, which I shall show your
Lordships, demanding from Mr. Ha