The Directors appear to have been deceived by this representation, and in their letter of January, 1782,[18] consider the money as actually paid into their Treasury.  Even under their error concerning the application of the money, they appear rather alarmed than satisfied with the brief apology of the Governor-General.  They consider the whole proceeding as extraordinary and mysterious.  They, however, do not condemn it with any remarkable asperity; after admitting that he might be induced to a temporary secrecy respecting the members of the board, from a fear of their resisting the proposed application, or any application of this money to the Company’s use, yet they write to the Governor-General and Council as follows:—­“It does not appear to us that there could be any real necessity for delaying to communicate to us immediate information of the channel by which the money came into Mr. Hastings’s possession, with a complete illustration of the cause or causes of so extraordinary an event.”  And again:  “The means proposed of defraying the extra expenses are very extraordinary; and the money, we conceive, must have come into his hands by an unusual channel; and when more complete information comes before us, we shall give our sentiments fully on the transaction.”  And speaking of this and other moneys under a similar description, they say, “We shall suspend our judgment, without approving it in the least degree, or proceeding to censure our Governor-General for this transaction.”  The expectations entertained by the Directors of a more complete explanation were natural, and their expression tender and temperate.  But the more complete information which they naturally expected they never have to this day received.

Mr. Hastings wrote two more letters to the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors, in which he mentions this transaction:  the first dated (as he asserts, and a Mr. Larkins swears) on the 22d of May, 1782;[19] the last, which accompanied it, so late as the 16th of December in the same year.[20] Though so long an interval lay between the transaction of the 26th of June, 1780, and the middle of December, 1782, (upwards of two years,) no further satisfaction is given.  He has written, since the receipt of the above letter of the Court of Directors, (which demanded, what they had a right to demand, a clear explanation of the particulars of this sum of money which he had no right to receive,) without giving them any further satisfaction.  Instead of explanation or apology, he assumes a tone of complaint and reproach, to the Directors:  he lays before them a kind of an account of presents received, to the amount of upwards of 200,000_l._,—­some at a considerable distance of time, and which had not been hitherto communicated to the Company.