ealing it
could possibly have made him discover it. This hundred thousand pounds
he declares he would have concealed, if he could; and yet he values
himself upon the discovery of it. Oh, my Lords, I am afraid that sums of
much greater magnitude have not been discovered at all! Your Lordships
now see some of the artifices of this letter. You see the variety of
styles he adopts, and how he turns himself into every shape and every
form. But, after all, do you find any clear discovery? do you find any
satisfactory answer to the Directors' letter? does he once tell you from
whom he received the money? does he tell you for what he received it,
what the circumstances of the persons giving it were, or any explanation
whatever of his mode of accounting for it? No: and here, at last, after
so many years' litigation, he is called to account for his
prevaricating, false accounts in Calcutta, and cannot give them to you.

His explanation of his conduct relative to the bonds now only remains
for your Lordships' consideration. Before he left Calcutta, in July,
1784 [1781?], he says, when he was going upon a service which he thought
a service of danger, he indorsed the false bonds which he had taken from
the Company, declaring them to be none of his. You will observe that
these bonds had been in his hands from the 9th or 15th of January (I am
not quite sure of the exact date) to the day when he went upon this
service, some time in the month of July, 1784 [1781?]. This service he
had formerly declared he did not apprehend to be a service of danger;
but he found it to be so after: it was in anticipation of that danger
that he made this attestation and certificate upon the bonds. But who
ever saw them? Mr. Larkins saw them, says he: "I gave them Mr. Larkins."
We will show you hereafter that Mr. Larkins deserves no credit in this
business,--that honor binds him not to discover the secrets of Mr.
Hastings. But why did he not deliver them up entirely, when he was going
upon that service? for all pretence of concealment in the business was
now at an end, as we shall prove. Why did he not cancel these bonds?
Why keep them at all? Why not enter truly the state of the account in
the Company's records? "But I indorsed them," he says. "Did you deliver
them so indorsed into the treasury?" "No, I delivered them indorsed into
the hands of my bribe-broker and agent." "But why not destroy them, or
give them up to the Company, and say you were paid, whic