He then proceeds:—­“First, I believe I can affirm with certainty that the several sums mentioned in the account transmitted with my letter above mentioned were received at or within a very few days of the dates which are affixed to them in the account.  But as this contains only the gross sums, and each of these was received in different payments, though at no great distance of time, I cannot therefore assign a great degree of accuracy to the account.”—­Your Lordships see, that, after all, he declares he cannot make his account accurate.  He further adds, “Perhaps the Honorable Court will judge this sufficient”—­that is, this explanation, namely, that he can give none—­“for any purpose to which their inquiry was directed; but if it should not be so, I will beg leave to refer, for a more minute information, and for the means of making any investigation which they may think it proper to direct, respecting the particulars of this transaction, to Mr. Larkins, your accountant-general, who was privy to every process of it, and possesses, as I believe, the original paper, which contained the only account that I ever kept of it.”

Here is a man who of his bribe accounts cannot give an account in the country where they are carried on.  When you call upon him in Bengal, he cannot give the account, because he is in Bengal; when he comes to England, he cannot give the account here, because his accounts are left in Bengal.  Again, he keeps no accounts himself, but his accounts are in Bengal, in the hands of somebody else:  to him he refers, and we shall see what that reference produced.

“In this, each receipt was, as I recollect, specifically inserted, with the name of the person by whom it was made; and I shall write to him to desire that he will furnish you with the paper itself, if it is still in being and in his hands, or with whatever he can distinctly recollect concerning it.”—­Here are accounts kept for the Company, and yet he does not know whether they are in existence anywhere.

“For my motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the Council or of the Court of Directors, and for taking bonds for part of these sums, and paying others into the treasury as deposits on my own account, I have generally accounted in my letter to the Honorable the Court of Directors of the 22d of May, 1782,—­namely, that I either chose to conceal the first receipts from public curiosity by receiving bonds for the amount, or possibly acted without any studied design which my memory at that distance of time could verify, and that I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest.  It will not be expected that I should be able to give a more correct explanation of my intentions after a lapse of three years, having declared at the time that many particulars had escaped my remembrance; neither shall I attempt to add more than the clearer affirmation of the facts implied in that report of them, and such inferences as necessarily or with a strong probability follow them.”