In the first place, if Mr. Hastings should die without having made a discovery of all his bribes, or if any other servant of the Company should imitate his example without his heroic good intentions in doing such villanous acts, how is the Company to recover the bribe-money?  The receivers need not divulge it till they think fit; and the moment an informer comes, that informer is ruined.  He comes, for instance, to the Governor-General and Council, and charges, say, not Mr. Hastings, but the head of the Board of Revenue, with receiving a bribe.  “Receive a bribe?  So I did; but it was with an intention of applying it to the Company’s service.  There I nick the informer:  I am beforehand with him:  the bribe is sanctified by my inward jesuitical intention.  I will make a merit of it with the Company.  I have received 40,000_l._ as a bribe; there it is for you:  I am acquitted; I am a meritorious servant:  let the informer go and seek his remedy as he can.”  Now, if an informer is once instructed that a person who receives bribes can turn them into merit, and take away his action from him, do you think that you ever will or can discover any one bribe?  But what is still worse, by this method disclose but one bribe, and you secure all the rest that you possibly can receive upon any occasion.  For instance, strong report prevails that a bribe of 40,000_l._ has been given, and the receiver expects that information will be laid against him.  He acknowledges that he has received a bribe of 40,000_l._, but says that it was for the service of the Company, and that it is carried to their account.  And thus, by stating that he has taken some money which he has accounted for, but concealing from whom that money came, which is exactly Mr. Hastings’s case, if at last an information should be laid before the Company of a specific bribe having been received of 40,000_l._, it is said by the receiver, “Lord! this is the 40,000_l._ I told you of:  it is broken into fragments, paid by instalments; and you have taken it and put it into your own coffers.”

Again, suppose him to take it through the hand of an agent, such as Gunga Govind Sing, and that this agent, who, as we have lately discovered, out of a bribe of 40,000_l._, which Mr. Hastings was to have received, kept back half of it, falls into their debt like him:  I desire to know what the Company can do in such a case.  Gunga Govind Sing has entered into no covenants with the Company.  There is no trace of his having this money, except what Mr. Hastings chooses to tell.  If he is called upon to refund it to the Company, he may say he never received it, that he was never ordered to extort this money from the people; or if he was under any covenant not to take money, he may set up this defence:  “I am forbidden to receive money; and I will not make a declaration which will subject me to penalties”:  or he may say in India, before the Supreme Court, “I have paid the bribe all to Mr. Hastings”; and then there must be a bill and suit there, a bill and suit here, and by that means, having one party on one side the water and the other party on the other, the Company may never come to a discovery of it.  And that in fact this is the way in which one of his great bribe-agents has acted I shall prove to your Lordships by evidence.