this time his first agent,
Major Fairfax, was sent over to Europe, which agent entered himself at
the India House, and appeared before the Committee of the House of
Commons, as an agent expressly sent over to explain whatever might
appear doubtful in his conduct. Major Fairfax, notwithstanding the
character in which Mr. Hastings employed him, appeared to be but a
letter-carrier: he had nothing to say: he gave them no information in
the India House at all: to the Committee (I can speak with the clearness
of a witness) he gave no satisfaction whatever. However, this agent
vanished in a moment, in order to make way for another, more
substantial, more efficient agent,--an agent perfectly known in this
country,--an agent known by the name given to him by Mr. Hastings, who,
like the princes of the East, gives titles: he calls him an incomparable
agent; and by that name he is very well known to your Lordships and the
world. This agent, Major Scott, who I believe was here prior to the
time of Major Fairfax's arrival in the character of an agent, and for
the very same purposes, was called before the Committee, and examined,
point by point, article by article, upon all that obscure enumeration of
bribes which the Court of Directors declare they did not understand; but
he declared that he could speak nothing with regard to any of these
transactions, and that he had got no instructions to explain any part of
them. There was but one circumstance which in the course of his
examination we drew from him,--namely, that one of these articles,
entered in the account of the 22d of May as a deposit, had been received
from Mr. Hastings as a bribe from Cheyt Sing. He produced an extract of
a letter relative to it, which your Lordships in the course of this
trial may see, and which will lead us into a further and more minute
inquiry on that head; but when that committee made their report in 1783,
not one single article had been explained to Parliament, not one
explained to the Company, except this bribe of Cheyt Sing, which Mr.
Hastings had never thought proper to communicate to the East India
Company, either by himself, nor, as far as we could find out, by his
agent; nor was it at last otherwise discovered than as it was drawn out
from him by a long examination in the Committee of the House of Commons.
And thus, notwithstanding the letters he had written and the agents he
employed, he seemed absolutely and firmly resolved to give his employers