The point was now to reconcile it with his safety.  The first thing he did was to attempt to conceal it; and accordingly we find him depositing very great sums of money in the public treasury through the means of the two persons I have already mentioned, namely, the deputy-treasurer and the accountant,—­paying them in and taking bonds for them as money of his own, and bearing legal interest.  This was his method of endeavoring to conceal some at least of his bribes:  for I would not suggest, nor have your Lordships to think, that I believe that these were his only bribes,—­for there is reason to think there was an infinite number besides; but it did so happen that they were those bribes which he thought might be discovered, some of which he knew were discovered, and all of which he knew might become the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Hastings said he might have concealed them forever.  Every one knows the facility of concealing corrupt transactions everywhere, in India particularly.  But this is by himself proved not to be universally true, at least not to be true in his own opinion; for he tells you, in his letter from Cheltenham, that he would have concealed the Nabob’s 100,000_l._, but that the magnitude rendered it easy of discovery.  He, therefore, avows an intention of concealment.

But it happens here, very singularly, that this sum, which his fears of discovery by others obliged him to discover himself, happens to be one of those of which no trace whatsoever appears, except merely from the operation of his own apprehensions.  There is no collateral testimony:  Middleton knew nothing of it; Anderson knew nothing of it; it was not directly communicated to the faithful Larkins or the trusty Croftes;—­which proves, indeed, the facility of concealment.  The fact is, you find the application always upon the discovery.  But concealment or discovery is a thing of accident.

The bribes which I have hitherto brought before your Lordships belong to the first period of his bribery, before he thought of the doctrine on which he has since defended it.  There are many other bribes which we charge him with having received during this first period, before an improving conversation and close virtuous connection with great lawyers had taught him how to practise bribes in such a manner as to defy detection, and instead of punishment to plead merit.  I am not bound to find order and consistency in guilt:  it is the reign of disorder.  The order of the proceeding, as far as I am able to trace such a scene of prevarication, direct fraud, falsehood, and falsification of the public accounts, was this.  From bribes he knew he could never abstain; and his then precarious situation made him the more rapacious.  He knew that a few of his former bribes had been discovered, declared, recorded,—­that for the moment, indeed, he was secure, because all informers had been punished and all concealers rewarded.  He expected