wrote back to him, requiring some further explanation upon the subject.  No explanation was given, but a communication of other bribes was made in his letter, said to be written in May of the same year, but not dispatched to Europe till the December following.  This produced another requisition from the Directors for explanation.  And here your Lordships are to observe that this correspondence is never in the way of letters written and answers given; but he and the Directors are perpetually playing at hide-and-seek with each other, and writing to each other at random:  Mr. Hastings making a communication one day, the Directors requiring an explanation the next; Mr. Hastings giving an account of another bribe on the third day, without giving any explanation of the former.  Still, however, the Directors are pursuing their chase.  But it was not till they learned that the committees of the House of Commons (for committees of the House of Commons had then some weight) were frowning upon them for this collusion with Mr. Hastings, that at last some honest men in the Direction were permitted to have some ascendency, and that a proper letter was prepared, which I shall show your Lordships, demanding from Mr. Hastings an exact account of all the bribes that he had received, and painting to him, in colors as strong at least as those I use, his bribery, his frauds, and peculations,—­and what does them great honor for that moment, they particularly direct that the money which was taken from the Nabob of Oude should be carried to his account.  These paragraphs were prepared by the Committee of Correspondence, and, as I understand, approved by the Court of Directors, but never were sent out to India.  However, something was sent, but miserably weak and lame of its kind; and Mr. Hastings never answered it, or gave them any explanation whatever.  He now, being prepared for his departure from Calcutta, and having finished all his other business, went up to Oude upon a chase in which just now we cannot follow him.  He returned in great disgust to Calcutta, and soon after set sail for England, without ever giving the Directors one word of the explanation which he had so often promised, and they had repeatedly asked.

We have now got Mr. Hastings in England, where you will suppose some satisfactory account of all these matters would be obtained from him.  One would suppose, that, on his arrival in London, he would have been a little quickened by a menace, as he expresses it, which had been thrown out against him in the House of Commons, that an inquiry would be made into his conduct; and the Directors, apprehensive of the same thing, thought it good gently to insinuate to him by a letter, written by whom and how we do not know, that he ought to give some explanation of these accounts.  This produced a letter which I believe in the business of the whole world cannot be paralleled:  not even himself could be his parallel in this.  Never did inventive folly, working upon conscious guilt, and throwing each other totally in confusion, ever produce such a false, fraudulent, prevaricating letter as this, which is now to be given to you.