which tended to confirm the payment of them; but Mr. Hastings wanted to invalidate that account by supposing she gave it under restraint.  The second question is,—­“In what manner was the application made to you, and by whom?” But the principal question is this:—­“On what account was the one lac and a half given to the Governor-General which you have laid to his account?  Was it in consequence of any requisition from him, or of any previous agreement, or of any established usage?” When a man asks concerning a sum of money, charged to be given to him by another person, on what account it was given, he does indirectly admit that that money actually was paid, and wants to derive a justification from the mode of the payment of it; and accordingly that inference was drawn from the question so sent up, and it served as an instruction to Munny Begum; and her answer was, that it was given to him, as an ancient usage and custom, for an entertainment.  So that the fact of the gift of the money is ascertained by the question put by Mr. Hastings to her, and her answer.  And thus at last comes his accomplice in this business, and gives the fullest testimony to the lac and a half.

I must beg leave, before I go further, to state the circumstances of the several witnesses examined upon this business.  They were of two kinds:  voluntary witnesses, and accomplices forced by inquiry and examination to discover their own guilt.  Of the first kind were Nundcomar and Rajah Gourdas:  these were the only two that can be said to be voluntary in the business, and who gave their information without much fear, though the last unwillingly, and with a full sense of the danger of doing it.  The other was the evidence of his accomplice, Munny Begum, wrung from her by the force of truth, in which she confessed that she gave the lac and a half, and justifies it upon the ground of its being a customary entertainment.  Besides this, there is the evidence of Chittendur, who was one of Mr. Hastings’s instruments, and one of the Begum’s servants.  He, being prepared to confound the two lacs with the one lac and a half, says, upon his examination, that a lac and a half was given; but upon examining into the particulars of it, he proves that the sum he gave was two lacs, and not a lac and a half:  for he says that there was a dispute about the other half lac; Nundcomar demanded interest, which the Begum was unwilling to allow, and consequently that half lac remained unpaid.  Now this half lac can be no part of the lac and a half, which is admitted on all hands, and proved by the whole body of concurrent testimony, to have been given to Mr. Hastings in one lumping sum.  When Chittendur endeavors to confound it with the lac and a half, he clearly establishes the fact that it was a parcel of the two lacs, and thus bears evidence, in attempting to prevaricate in favor of Mr. Hastings, that one lac and a half was paid, which Mr. Hastings is willing to allow; but when he enters into the particulars of it, he proves by the subdivision of the payment, and by the non-payment of part of it, that it accords with the two lacs, and not with the lac and a half.