nformed of my
motive for this than merely that it contained the substance of a
conversation which had passed between me and another gentleman, which,
in case that conversation should hereafter become the subject of
inquiry, I wished to be able to adduce the memorandum then made of it,
in corroboration of my own testimony; and although that paper has
remained unopened to this hour, and notwithstanding that I kept no
memorandum whatever of the substance thereof, yet, as I have wrote this
representation under the most scrupulous adherence to what I conceived
to be truth, should it ever become necessary to refer to this paper, I
am confident that it will not be found to differ materially from the
substance of this representation."

I forgot to mention, that, besides these two bonds, which Mr. Hastings
declared to be the Company's, and one bond his own, that he slipped into
the place of the bond of his own a much better, namely, a bond of
November, which he never mentioned to the Company till the 22d of May;
and this bond for current rupees 1,74,000, or sicca rupees 1,50,000, was
taken for the payment stated in the paper No. 1 to have been made to Mr.
Croftes on the 11th Aghan, 1187, which corresponds to the 23d of
November, 1780. This is the Nuddea money, and this is all that you know
of it; you know that this money, for which he had taken this other bond
from the Company, was not his own neither, but bribes taken from the
other provinces.

I am ashamed to be troublesome to your Lordships in this dry affair, but
the detection of fraud requires a good deal of patience and assiduity,
and we cannot wander into anything that can relieve the mind: if it was
in my power to do it, I would do it. I wish, however, to call your
Lordships' attention to this last bribe before I quit these bonds. Such
is the confusion, so complicated, so intricate are these bribe accounts,
that there is always something left behind, glean never so much from the
paragraphs of Mr. Hastings and Mr. Larkins. "I could not bring them to
account," says Mr. Larkins. "They were received before the 1st and 2d of
October." Why does not the running treasury account give an account of
them? The Committee of the House of Commons examined whether the running
treasury account had any such account of sums deposited. No such thing.
They are said by Mr. Hastings to be deposited in June: they were not
deposited in October, nor any account of them given till the January
f