or consistent with our public credit to have afforded it.  It was, nevertheless, my decided opinion that some aid should be given, not less as a necessary relief than as an indication of confidence, and a return for the many instances of substantial kindness which we had within the course of the two last years experienced from the government of Berar.  I had an assurance that such a proposal would receive the acquiescence of the board; but I knew that it would not pass without opposition, and it would have become public, which might have defeated its purpose.  Convinced of the necessity of the expedient, and assured of the sincerity of the government of Berar, from evidences of stronger proof to me than I could make them appear to the other members of the board, I resolved to adopt it and take the entire responsibility of it upon myself.  In this mode a less considerable sum would suffice.  I accordingly caused three lac of rupees to be delivered to the minister of the Rajah of Berar resident in Calcutta.  He has transmitted it to Cuttack.  Two thirds of this sum I have raised by my own credit, and shall charge it in my official accounts; the other third I have supplied from the cash in my hands belonging to the Honorable Company.”

Your Lordships see in this business another mode which he has of accounting with the Company, and informing them of his bribe.  He begins his account of this transaction by saying that it has something of affinity to the last anecdote,—­meaning the account of the first bribe.  An anecdote is made a head of an account; and this, I believe, is what none of your Lordships ever have heard of before,—­and I believe it is yet to be learned in this commercial nation, a nation of accurate commercial account.  The account he gives of the first is an anecdote; and what is his account of the second?  A relation of an anecdote:  not a near relation, but something of affinity,—­a remote relation, cousin three or four times removed, of the half-blood, or something of that kind, to this anecdote:  and he never tells them any circumstance of it whatever of any kind, but that it has some affinity to the former anecdote.  But, my Lords, the thing which comes to some degree of clearness is this, that he did give money to the Rajah of Berar.  And your Lordships will be so good as to advert carefully to the proportions in which he gave it.  He did give him two lac of rupees of money raised by his own credit, his own money; and the third he advanced out of the Company’s money in his hands.  He might have taken the Company’s money undoubtedly, fairly, openly, and held it in his hands, for a hundred purposes; and therefore he does not tell them that even that third was money he had obtained by bribery and corruption.  No:  he says it is money of the Company’s, which he had in his hand.  So that you must get through a long train of construction before you ascertain that this sum was what it turns out to be, a bribe, which he retained for the Company.  Your Lordships will