public have some obligation, and in return for which they ought to meet with some indulgence, examining into all these circumstances, and having heard that Mr. Hastings had deposited a sum of money in the hands of the Company’s sub-treasurer in the month of June, sent for the Company’s books.  They looked over those books, but they did not find the least trace of any such sum of money, and not any account of it:  nor could there be, because it was not paid to the Company’s account till the November following.  The accountant had received the money, but never entered it from June till November.  Then, at last, have we an account of it.  But was it even then entered regularly upon the Company’s accounts?  No such thing:  it is a deposit carried to the Governor-General’s credit.

    [The entry of the several species in which this deposit was made
    was here read from the Company’s General Journal of 1780 and 1781.]

My Lords, when this account appears at last, when this money does emerge in the public accounts, whose is it?  Is it the Company’s?  No:  Mr. Hastings’s.  And thus, if, notwithstanding this obscure account in November, the Directors had claimed and called for this affinity to an anecdote,—­if they had called for this anecdote and examined the account,—­if they had said, “We observe here entered two lac and upwards; come, Mr. Hastings, let us see where this money is,”—­they would find that it is Mr. Hastings’s money, not the Company’s; they would find that it is carried to his credit.  In this manner he hands over this sum, telling them, on the 22d of May, 1782, that not only the bonds were a fraud, but the deposit was a fraud, and that neither bonds nor deposit did in reality belong to him.  Why did he enter it at all?  Then, afterwards, why did he not enter it as the Company’s?  Why make a false entry, to enter it as his own?  And how came he, two years after, when he does tell you that it was the Company’s and not his own, to alter the public accounts?  But why did he not tell them at that time, when he pretends to be opening his breast to the Directors, from whom he received it, or say anything to give light to the Company respecting it? who, supposing they had the power of dispensing with an act of Parliament, or licensing bribery at their pleasure, might have been thereby enabled to say, “Here you ought to have received it,—­there it might be oppressive and of dreadful example.”

I have only to state, that, in this letter, which was pretended to be written on the 22d of May, 1782, your Lordships will observe that he thinks it his absolute duty (and I wish to press this upon your Lordships, because it will be necessary in a comparison which I shall have hereafter to make) to lay open all their affairs to them, to give them a full and candid explanation of his conduct, which he afterwards confesses he is not able to do.  The paragraph has been just read to you.  It amounts to this:  “I have taken many bribes,—­have falsified