means of receiving bribes! for such I shall prove them to be in the particular instances.—­“But neither could it occur to me as necessary to state on our Proceedings every little aid that I could thus procure; nor do I know how I could have stated it without appearing to court favor by an ostentation which I disdained, nor without the chance of exciting the jealousy of my colleagues by the constructive assertion of a separate and unparticipated merit, derived from the influence of my station, to which they might have had an equal claim.”

Now we see, that, after hammering his brains for many years, he does find out his motive, which he could not verify at the time,—­namely, that, if he let his colleagues know that he was receiving bribes, and gaining the glory of receiving them, they might take it into their heads likewise to have their share in the same glory, as they were joined in the same commission, enjoyed the same powers, and were subject to the same restrictions.  It was, indeed, scandalous in Mr. Hastings, not behaving like a good, fair colleague in office, not to let them know that he was going on in this career of receiving bribes, and to deprive them of their share in the glory of it:  but they were grovelling creatures, who thought that keeping clean hands was some virtue.—­“Well, but you have applied some of these bribes to your own benefit:  why did you give no account of those bribes?” “I did not,” he says, “because it might have excited the envy of my colleagues.”  To be sure, if he was receiving bribes for his own benefit, and they not receiving such bribes, and if they had a liking to that kind of traffic, it is a good ground of envy, that a matter which ought to be in common among them should be confined to Mr. Hastings, and he therefore did well to conceal it; and on the other hand, if we suppose him to have taken them, as he pretends, for the Company’s use, in order not to excite a jealousy in his colleagues for being left out of this meritorious service, to which they had an equal claim, he did well to take bonds for what ought to be brought to the Company’s account.  These are reasons applicable to his colleagues, who sat with him at the same board,—­Mr. Macpherson, Mr. Stables, Mr. Wheler, General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis:  he was afraid of exciting their envy or their jealousy.

You will next see another reason, and an extraordinary one it is, which he gives for concealing these bribes from his inferiors.  But I must first tell your Lordships, what, till the proof is brought before you, you will take on credit,—­indeed, it is on his credit,—­that, when he formed the Committee of Revenue, he bound them by a solemn oath, “not, under any name or pretence whatever, to take from any zemindar, farmer, person concerned in the revenue, or any other, any gift, gratuity, allowance, or reward whatever, or anything beyond their salary”; and this is the oath to which he alludes.  Now his reason for concealing his bribes from his inferiors,