You have seen him at Patna, at Calcutta, in the country, on the Ganges:  now you see him at the waters at Cheltenham; and you will find his letter from that place to comprehend the substance of all his former letters, and to be a digest of all the falsity, fraud, and nonsense contained in the whole of them.  Here it is, and your Lordships will suffer it to be read.  I must beg your patience; I must acknowledge that it has been the most difficult of all things to explain, but much more difficult to make pleasant and not wearisome, falsity and fraud pursued through all its artifices; and therefore, as it has been the most painful work to us to unravel fraud and prevarication, so there is nothing that more calls for the attention, the patience, the vigilance, and the scrutiny of an exact court of justice.  But as you have already had almost the whole of the man, do not think it too much to hear the rest in this letter from Cheltenham.  It is dated, Cheltenham, 11th of July, 1785, addressed to William Devaynes, Esquire;[8] and it begins thus:—­

“Sir,—­The Honorable Court of Directors, in their general letter to Bengal by the ‘Surprise,’ dated the 16th of March, 1784, were pleased to express their desire that I should inform them of the periods when each sum of the presents mentioned in my address of the 22d May, 1782, was received,—­what were my motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the Council, or of the Court of Directors,—­and what were my reasons for taking bonds for part of these sums, and for paying other sums into the treasury as deposits, on my own account.”

I wish your Lordships to pause a moment.  Here is a letter written in July, 1785.  You see that from the 29th of December [November?], 1780, till that time, during which interval, though convinced in his own conscience and though he had declared his own opinion of the necessity of giving a full explanation of these money transactions, he had been imposing upon the Directors false and prevaricating accounts of them, they were never able to obtain a full disclosure from him.

He goes on:—­“I have been kindly apprised that the information required as above is yet expected from me.  I hope that the circumstances of my past situation, when considered, will plead my excuse for having thus long withheld it.  The fact is, that I was not at the Presidency when the ‘Surprise’ arrived; and when I returned to it, my time and attention were so entirely engrossed, to the day of my final departure from it, by a variety of other more important occupations, of which, Sir, I may safely appeal to your testimony, grounded on the large portion contributed by myself of the volumes which compose our Consultations of that period,”—­

These Consultations, my Lords, to which he appeals, form matter of one of the charges that the Commons have brought against Mr. Hastings,—­namely, a fraudulent attempt to ruin certain persons employed in subordinate situations under him, for the purpose, by intruding himself into their place, of secretly carrying on his own transactions.  These volumes of Consultations were written to justify that act.