On the 2d of May following the date of this Patna letter he came down to Calcutta with a mind, as he himself describes it, greatly agitated.  All his hope of plundering Benares had totally failed.  The produce of the robbing of the Begums, in the manner your Lordships have heard, was all dissipated to pay the arrears of the armies:  there was no fund left.  He felt himself agitated and full of dread, knowing that he had been threatened with having his place taken from him several times, and that he might be called home to render an account.  He had heard that inquiries had begun in a menacing form in Parliament; and though at that time Bengal was not struck at, there was a charge of bribery and peculation brought against the Governor of Madras.  With this dread, with a mind full of anxiety and perturbation, he writes a letter, as he pretends, on the 22d of May, 1782.  Your Lordships will remark, that, when he came down to Calcutta from his expedition up the country, he did not till the 22d of May give any account whatever of these transactions,—­and that this letter, or pretended letter, of the 22d of May was not sent till the 16th of December following.  We shall clearly prove that he had abundant means of sending it, and by various ways, before the 16th of December, 1782, when he inclosed in another letter that of the 22d of May.  This is the letter of discovery; this is the letter by which his breast was to be laid open to his employers, and all the obscurity of his transactions to be elucidated.  Here are indeed new discoveries, but they are like many new-discovered lands, exceedingly inhospitable, very thinly inhabited, and producing nothing to gratify the curiosity of the human mind.

This letter is addressed to the Honorable the Court of Directors, dated Fort William, 22d May, 1782.  He tells them he had promised to account for the ten lacs of rupees which he had received, and this promise, he says, he now performs, and that he takes that opportunity of accounting with them likewise for several other sums which he had received.  His words are,—­

“This promise I now perform, and, deeming it consistent with the spirit of it, I have added such other sums as have been occasionally converted to the Company’s property through my means, in consequence of the like original destination.  Of the second of these sums you have already been advised in a letter which I had the honor to address the Honorable Court of Directors, dated 29th November, 1780.  Both this and the third article were paid immediately to the treasury, by my order to the sub-treasurer to receive them on the Company’s account, but never passed through my hands.  The three sums for which bonds were granted were in like manner paid to the Company’s treasury, without passing through my hands, but their application was not specified.  The sum of 50,000 current rupees was received while I was on my journey to Benares, and applied as expressed in the account.