flying scouting bodies,
which were only to be collected together by a skilful man who knew how
to manage them, and regulate the motions of those wild and disorderly
troops. When No. 2 was to be explained, Cantoo Baboo failed him; he was
not worth a farthing as to any transaction that happened when Mr.
Hastings was in the Upper Provinces, where though he was his faithful
and constant attendant through the whole, yet he could give no account
of it. Mr. Hastings's moonshee then reads three lines from a paper to
Mr. Larkins. Now it is no way even insinuated that both the Bengal and
Persian papers did not contain the account of other immense sums; and,
indeed, from the circumstance of only three lines being read from the
Persian paper, your Lordships will be able, in your own minds, to form
some judgment upon this business.

I shall now proceed with his letter of explanation. "The particulars,"
he goes on to say, "of the paper No. 1 were read to me from a Bengal
paper by Mr. Hastings's banian, Cantoo Baboo; and if I am not mistaken,
the three first lines of that No. 2 were read over to me from a Persian
paper by his moonshee. The translation of these particulars, made by me,
was, as I verily believe, the first complete memorandum that he ever
possessed of them in the English language; and I am confident, that, if
I had not suggested to him the necessity of his taking this precaution,
he would at this moment have been unable to have afforded any such
information concerning them."

Now, my Lords, if he had not got, on the intimation of Mr. Larkins, some
scraps of paper, your Lordships might have at this day wanted that
valuable information which Mr. Larkins has laid before you.
These, however, contain, Mr. Larkins says, "the first
complete"--what?--account, do you imagine?--no, "the first complete
_memorandum_." You would imagine that he would himself, for his own use,
have notched down, somewhere or other, in short-hand, in Persian
characters, short without vowels, or in some other way, _memorandums_.
But he had not himself even a memorandum of this business; and
consequently, when he was at Cheltenham, and even here at your bar, he
could never have had any account of a sum of 200,000_l._, but by this
account of Mr. Larkins, taken, as people read them, from detached pieces
of paper.

One would have expected that Mr. Larkins, being warned that day, and
cautioned by the strange memory of Mr. Hastings, and the dangerous
sit