and able. But I can very well from the circumstances discover motives
which may affect a giddy, superficial, shattered, guilty, anxious,
restless mind, full of the weak resources of fraud, craft, and intrigue,
that might induce him to make these discoveries, and to make them in the
manner he has done. Not rational, and well-fitted for their purposes, I
am very ready to admit. For God forbid that guilt should ever leave a
man the free, undisturbed use of his faculties! For as guilt never rose
from a true use of our rational faculties, so it is very frequently
subversive of them. God forbid that prudence, the first of all the
virtues, as well as the supreme director of them all, should ever be
employed in the service of any of the vices! No: it takes the lead, and
is never found where justice does not accompany it; and if ever it is
attempted to bring it into the service of the vices, it immediately
subverts their cause. It tends to their discovery, and, I hope and
trust, finally to their utter ruin and destruction.

In the first place, I am to remark to your Lordships, that the accounts
he has given of one of these sums of money are totally false and
contradictory. Now there is not a stronger presumption, nor can one
want more reason to judge a transaction fraudulent, than that the
accounts given of it are contradictory; and he has given three accounts
utterly irreconcilable with each other. He is asked, "How came you to
take bonds for this money, if it was not your own? How came you to
vitiate and corrupt the state of the Company's records, and to state
yourself a lender to the Company, when in reality you were their
debtor?" His answer was, "I really cannot tell; I have forgot my
reasons; the distance of time is so great," (namely, a time of about two
years, or not so long,) "I cannot give an account of the matter; perhaps
I had this motive, perhaps I had another," (but what is the most
curious,) "perhaps I had none at all which I can now recollect." You
shall hear the account which Mr. Hastings himself gives, his own
fraudulent representation, of these corrupt transactions. "For my
motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the
Council, or of the Court of Directors, and for taking bonds for part of
these sums and paying others into the treasury as deposits on my own
account, I have generally accounted in my letter to the Honorable the
Court of Directors of the 22d of May, 1782,--namely, that I