ollowing. "These bonds," says he, "I could not enter as regular money,
to be entered on the Company's account, or in any public way, until I
had had an order of the Governor-General and Council." But why had not
you an order of the Governor-General and Council? We are not calling on
you, Mr. Larkins, for an account of your conduct: we are calling upon
Mr. Hastings for an account of his conduct, and which he refers to you
to explain. Why did not Mr. Hastings order you to carry them to the
public account? "Because," says he, "there was no other way." Every one
who knows anything of a treasury or public banking-place knows, that if
any person brings money as belonging to the public, that the public
accountant is bound, no doubt, to receive it and enter it as such.
"But," says he, "I could not do it until the account could be settled,
as between debtor and creditor: I did not do it till I could put on one
side durbar charges, secret service, to such an amount, and balance that
again with bonds to Mr. Hastings." That is, he could not make an entry
regularly in the Company's books until Mr. Hastings had enabled him to
commit one of the grossest frauds and violations of a public trust that
ever was committed, by ordering that money of the Company's to be
considered as his own, and a bond to be taken as a security for it from
the Company, as if it was his own.

But to proceed with this deposit. What is the substance of Mr. Larkins's
explanation of it? The substance of this explanation is, that here was a
bribe received by Mr. Hastings from Cheyt Sing, guarded with such
scrupulous secrecy, that it was not carried to the house of Mr. Croftes,
who was to receive it finally, but to the house of Mr. Larkins, as a
less suspected place; and that it was conveyed in various sums, no two
people ever returning twice with the various payments which made up that
sum of 23,000_l._ or thereabouts. Now do you want an instance of
prevarication and trickery in an account? If any person should inquire
whether 23,000_l._ had been paid by Cheyt Sing to Mr. Hastings, there
was not any one man living, or any person concerned in the transaction,
except Mr. Larkins, who received it, that could give an account of how
much he received, or who brought it. As no two people are ever his
confidants in the same transaction in Mr. Hastings's accounts, so here
no two people are permitted to have any share whatever in bringing the
several fragments that make up t