established as a regular affair, the officer would never have gone to the Nabob and asked under what name to enter it; but he found an irregular affair, and he did not know what head to put it under.  And from the whole of the proceedings it appears that three lacs and a half were paid:  two lac by way of bribe, one lac and a half under the color of an entertainment.  Mr. Hastings endeavors to invalidate the first obliquely, not directly, for he never directly denied it; and he partly admits the second, in hopes that all the proof of payment of the first charge should be merged and confounded in the second.  And therefore your Lordships will see from the beginning of that business till it came into the hands of Mr. Smith, his agent, then appearing in the name and character of agent and solicitor to the Company, that this was done to give some appearance and color to it by a false representation, as your Lordships will see, of every part of the transaction.

The proof, then, of the two lacs rests upon the evidence of Nundcomar, the letter of Munny Begum, and the evidence of Rajah Gourdas.  The evidence of the lac and a half, by way of entertainment, was at first the same; and afterwards begins a series of proofs to which Mr. Hastings has himself helped us.  For, in the first place, he produces this office paper in support of his attempt to establish the confusion between the payment of the two lacs and of the lac and a half.  He did not himself deny that he received a lac and a half, because with respect to that lac and a half he had founded some principle of justification.  Accordingly this office paper asserts and proves this lac and a half to have been given, in addition to the other proofs.  Then Munny Begum herself is inquired of.  There is a commission appointed to go up to her residence; and the fact is proved to the satisfaction of Mr. Goring, the commissioner.  The Begum had put a paper of accounts, through her son, into his hands, which shall be given at your Lordships’ bar, in which she expressly said that she gave Mr. Hastings a lac and a half for entertainment.  But Mr. Hastings objects to Mr. Goring’s evidence upon this occasion.  He wanted to supersede Mr. Goring in the inquiry; and he accordingly appoints, with the consent of the Council, two creatures of his own to go and assist in that inquiry.  The question which he directs these commissioners to put to Munny Begum is this:—­“Was the sum of money charged by you to be given to Mr. Hastings given under an idea of entertainment customary, or upon what other ground, or for what other reason?” He also desires the following questions may be proposed to the Begum:—­“Was any application made to you for the account which you have delivered of three lacs and a half of rupees said to have been paid to the Governor and Mr. Middleton? or did you deliver the account of your own free will, and unsolicited?” My Lords, you see that with regard to the whole three lacs and a half of rupees the Begum had given an account