to that effect in a former letter to your Honorable Committee, dated 20th January last.  However, to preclude the possibility of such reflections from affecting me, I have desired Mr. Larkins, who was privy to the whole transaction, to affix to the letter his affidavit of the date in which it was written.  I own I feel most sensibly the mortification of being reduced to the necessity of using such precautions to guard my reputation from dishonor.  If I had at any time possessed that degree of confidence from my immediate employers which they never withheld from the meanest of my predecessors, I should have disdained to use these attentions.  How I have drawn on me a different treatment I know not; it is sufficient that I have not merited it:  and in the course of a service of thirty-two years, and ten of these employed in maintaining the powers and discharging the duties of the first office of the British government in India, that Honorable Court ought to know whether I possess the integrity and honor which are the first requisites of such a station.  If I wanted these, they have afforded me but too powerful incentives to suppress the information which I now convey to them through you, and to appropriate to my own use the sums which I have already passed to their credit, by the unworthy, and, pardon me if I add, dangerous, reflections which they have passed upon me for the first communication of this kind:  and your own experience will suggest to you, that there are persons who would profit by such a warning.

Upon the whole of these transactions, which to you, who are accustomed to view business in an official and regular light, may appear unprecedented, if not improper, I have but a few short remarks to suggest to your consideration.

If I appear in any unfavorable light by these transactions, I resign the common and legal security of those who commit crimes or errors.  I am ready to answer every particular question that may be put against myself, upon honor or upon oath.

The sources from which these reliefs to the public service have come would never have yielded them to the Company publicly; and the exigencies of your service (exigencies created by the exposition of your affairs, and faction in your councils) required those supplies.

I could have concealed them, had I had a wrong motive, from yours and the public eye forever; and I know that the difficulties to which a spirit of injustice may subject me for my candor and avowal are greater than any possible inconvenience that could have attended the concealment, except the dissatisfaction of my own mind.  These difficulties are but a few of those which I have suffered in your service.  The applause of my own breast is my surest reward, and was the support of my mind in meeting them:  your applause, and that of my country, are my next wish in life.

  I have the honor to be, Honorable Sirs,
    Your most faithful, most obedient,
      and most humble servant,