that the Parliamentary inquiry, which he knew was at this time in progress, might have forced from him this notable discovery.  He says, “I do not fear the consequences of any Parliamentary process.”  Indeed, he needed not to fear any Parliamentary inquiry, if it produced no further discovery than that which your Lordships have in the letter of the 22d of May, and in the accounts subjoined to it.  He says, that “the delay is of no public consequence; but it has produced a situation which, with respect to myself, I regard as unfortunate, because it exposes me to the meanest imputation, from the occasion which the late Parliamentary inquiries have since furnished.”

Now here is a very curious letter, that I wish to have read for some other reasons, which will afterwards appear, but principally at present for the purpose of showing you that he held it to be his duty and thought it to the last degree dishonorable not to give the Company an account of those secret bribes:  he thought it would reflect upon him, and ruin his character forever, if this account did not come voluntarily from him, but was extorted by terror of Parliamentary inquiry.  In this letter of the 16th December, 1782, he thus writes.

“The delay is of no public consequence, but it has produced a situation which, with respect to myself, I regard as unfortunate; because it exposes me to the meanest imputation, from the occasion which the late Parliamentary inquiries have since furnished, but which were unknown when my letter was written, and written in the necessary consequence of a promise made to that effect in a former letter to your Honorable Committee, dated 20th January last.  However, to preclude the possibility of such reflections from affecting me, I have desired Mr. Larkins, who was privy to the whole transaction, to affix to the letter his affidavit of the date in which it was written.  I own I feel most sensibly the mortification of being reduced to the necessity of using such precautions to guard my reputation from dishonor.  If I had at any time possessed that degree of confidence from my immediate employers which they never withheld from the meanest of my predecessors, I should have disdained to use these attentions.  How I have drawn on me a different treatment I know not; it is sufficient that I have not merited it.  And in the course of a service of thirty-two years, and ten of these employed in maintaining the powers and discharging the duties of the first office of the British government in India, that honorable court ought to know whether I possess the integrity and honor which are the first requisites of such a station.  If I wanted these, they have afforded me but too powerful incentives to suppress the information which I now convey to them through you, and to appropriate to my own use the sums which I have already passed to their credit, by the unworthy and, pardon me, if I add, dangerous, reflections which they have passed upon me for the first communication of this kind:  and your own experience will suggest to you, that there are persons who would profit by such a warning.