bonds?  Why keep them at all?  Why not enter truly the state of the account in the Company’s records?  “But I indorsed them,” he says.  “Did you deliver them so indorsed into the treasury?” “No, I delivered them indorsed into the hands of my bribe-broker and agent.”  “But why not destroy them, or give them up to the Company, and say you were paid, which would have been the only truth in this transaction?  Why did you not indorse them before?  Why not, during the long period of so many years, cancel them?” No, he kept them to the very day when he was going from Calcutta, and had made a declaration that they were not his.  Never before, upon any account, had they appeared; and though the Committee of the House of Commons, in the Eleventh Report, had remarked upon all these scandalous proceedings and prevarications, yet he was not stimulated, even then, to give up these bonds.  He held them in his hands till the time when he was preparing for his departure from Calcutta, in spite of the Directors, in spite of the Parliament, in spite of the cries of his own conscience, in a matter which was now grown public, and would knock doubly upon his reputation and conduct.  He then declares they are not for his own use, but for the Company’s service.  But were they then cancelled?  I do not find a trace of their being cancelled.  In this letter of the 17th of January, 1785, he says with regard to these bonds, “The following sums were paid into the treasury, and bonds granted for the same in the name of the Governor-General, in whose possession the bonds remain, with a declaration upon each, indorsed and signed by him, that he has no claim on the Company for the amount either of principal or interest, no part of the latter having been received.”

To the account of the 22d of May, of the indorsement, is added the declaration upon oath.  But why any man need to declare upon oath that the money which he has fraudulently taken and concealed from another person is not his is the most extraordinary thing in the world.  If he had a mind to have it placed to his credit as his own, then an oath would be necessary; but in this case any one would believe him upon his word.  He comes, however, and says, “This is indorsed upon oath.”  Oath! before what magistrate?  In whose possession were the bonds?  Were they given up?  There is no trace of that upon the record, and it stands for him to prove that they were ever given up, and in any hands but Mr. Larkins’s and his own.  So here are the bonds, begun in obscurity and ending in obscurity, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, corruption to corruption, and fraud to fraud.  This is all we see of these bonds, till Mr. Larkins, to whom he writes some letter concerning them which does not appear, is called to read a funeral sermon over them.

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