Your Committee do not find that the covenants have been sent, or that any prosecution has been begun.

A vast scene of further peculation and corruption, as well in this business as in several other instances, appears in the evidence of the Rajah Nundcomar.  That evidence, and all the proceedings relating to it, are entered in the Appendix.  It was the last evidence of the kind.  The informant was hanged.  An attempt was made by Mr. Hastings to indict him for a conspiracy; this failing of effect, another prosecutor appeared for an offence not connected with these charges.  Nundcomar, the object of that charge, was executed, at the very crisis of the inquiry, for an offence of another nature, not capital by the laws of the country.  As long as it appeared safe, several charges were made (which are inserted at large in the Appendix); and Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell seemed apprehensive of many more.  General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis declared, in a minute entered on the Consultations of the 5th May, 1775, that, “in the late proceedings of the Revenue Board, it will appear that there is no species of peculation from which the Honorable Governor-General has thought proper to abstain.”  A charge of offences of so heinous a nature, so very extensive, so very deliberate, made on record by persons of great weight, appointed by act of Parliament his associates in the highest trust,—­a charge made at his own board, to his own face, and transmitted to their common superiors, to whom they were jointly and severally accountable, this was not a thing to be passed over by Mr. Hastings; still less ought it to have perished in other hands.  It ought to have been brought to an immediate and strict discussion.  General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis ought to have been punished for a groundless accusation, if such it had been.  If the accusation were founded, Mr. Hastings was very unfit for the high office of Governor-General, or for any office.

After this comprehensive account by his colleagues of the Governor-General’s conduct, these gentlemen proceeded to the particulars, and they produced the case of a corrupt bargain of Mr. Hastings concerning the disposition of office.  This transaction is here stated by your Committee in a very concise manner, being on this occasion merely intended to point out to the House the absolute necessity which, in their opinion, exists for another sort of inquiry into the corruptions of men in power in India than hitherto has been pursued.  The proceedings may be found at large in the Appendix.

A complaint was made that Mr. Hastings had sold the office of Phousdar of Hoogly to a person called Khan Jehan Khan on a corrupt agreement,—­which was, that from his emoluments of seventy-two thousand rupees a year he was to pay to the Governor-General thirty-six thousand rupees annually, and to his banian, Cantoo Baboo, four thousand more.  The complainant offers to pay to the Company the forty thousand rupees