(that is, his offer of two lac of rupees out of his own private cash for the Company’s service, upon the 26th of June, 1780,) “on the occasion I have mentioned, is to obviate the false conclusions or purposed misrepresentations which may be made of it, either as an artifice of ostentation or as the effect of corrupt influence, by assuring you that the money, by whatever means it came into your possession, was not my own,—­that I had myself no right to it, nor would or could have received it, but for the occasion, which prompted me to avail myself of the accidental means which were at that instant afforded me of accepting and converting it to the property and use of the Company:  and with this brief apology I shall dismiss the subject.”

My Lords, you see what an account Mr. Hastings has given of some obscure transaction by which he contradicts the record.  For, on the 26th of June, he generously, nobly, full of enthusiasm for their service, offers to the Company money of his own.  On the 29th of November he tells the Court of Directors that the money he offered on the former day was not his own,—­that his assertion was totally false,—­that the money was not his,—­that he had no right to receive it,—­and that he would not have received it, but for the occasion, which prompted him to avail himself of the accidental means which at that instant offered.

Such is the account sent by their Governor in India, acting as an accountant, to the Company,—­a company with whom everything is matter of account.  He tells them, indeed, that the sum he had offered was not his own,—­that he had no right to it,—­and that he would not have taken it, if he had not been greatly tempted by the occasion; but he never tells them by what means he came at it, the person from whom he received it, the occasion upon which he received it, (whether justifiable or not,) or any one circumstance under heaven relative to it.  This is a very extraordinary account to give to the public of a sum which we find to be somewhere above twenty thousand pounds, taken by Mr. Hastings in some way or other.  He set the Company blindly groping in the dark by the very pretended light, the ignis-fatuus, which he held out to them:  for at that time all was in the dark, and in a cloud:  and this is what Mr. Hastings calls information communicated to the Company on the subject of these bribes.

You have heard of obscurity illustrated by a further obscurity,—­obscurum per obscurius.  He continues to tell them,—­“Something of affinity to this anecdote may appear in the first aspect of another transaction, which I shall proceed to relate, and of which it is more immediately my duty to inform you.”  He then tells them that he had contrived to give a sum of money to the Rajah of Berar, and the account he gives of that proceeding is this.  “We had neither money to spare, nor, in the apparent state of that government in its relation to ours, would it have been either prudent