and yet it is all confounded under bonds, as if the money had been his
own. What can you say to this heroic sharper disguised under the name of
a patriot, when you find him to be nothing but a downright cheat, first
taking money under the Company's name, then taking their securities to
him for their own money, and afterwards entering a false account of
them, contradicting that by another account?--and God knows whether the
third be true or false. These are not things that I am to make out by
any conclusion of mine; here they are, made out by himself and Mr.
Larkins, and, comparing them with his letter of the 27th, you find a
gross fraud covered by a direct falsehood.

We have now done with Mr. Larkins's account of the bonds, and are come
to the other species of Mr. Hastings's frauds, (for there is a great
variety in them,) and first to Cheyt Sing's bribe. Mr. Larkins came to
the knowledge of the bond-money through Gunga Govind Sing and through
Cantoo Baboo. Of this bribe he was not in the secret originally, but was
afterwards made a confidant in it; it was carried to him; and the
account he gives of it I will state to your Lordships.

"The fourth sum stated in Mr. Hastings's account was the produce of
sundry payments made to me by Sadamund, Cheyt Sing's buckshee, who
either brought or sent the gold mohurs to my house, from whence they
were taken by me to Mr. Croftes, either on the same night or early in
the morning after: they were made at different times, and I well
remember that the same people never came twice. On the 21st June, 1780,
Mr. Hastings sent for me, and desired that I would take charge of a
present that had been offered to him by Cheyt Sing's buckshee, under the
plea of atoning for the opposition which he had made towards the payment
of the extra subsidy for defraying part of the expenses of the war, but
really in the hope of its inducing Mr. Hastings to give up that claim;
with which view the present had first been offered. Mr. Hastings
declared, that, although he would not take this for his own use, he
would apply it to that of the Company, in removing Mr. Francis's
objections to the want of a fund for defraying the extra expenses of
Colonel Camac's detachment. On my return to the office, I wrote down the
substance of what Mr. Hastings had said to me, and requested Mr. James
Miller, my deputy, to seal it up with his own seal, and write upon it,
that he had then done so at my request. He was no further i