My Lords, I am come now near the period of this class of Mr. Hastings’s bribes.  I am a little exhausted.  There are many circumstances that might make me wish not to delay this business by taking up another day at your Lordships’ bar, in order to go through this long, intricate scene of corruption.  But my strength now fails me.  I hope within a very short time, to-morrow or the next court-day, to finish it, and to go directly into evidence, as I long much to do, to substantiate the charge; but it was necessary that the evidence should be explained.  You have heard as much of the drama as I could go through:  bear with my weakness a little:  Mr. Larkins’s letter will be the epilogue to it.  I have already incurred the censure of the prisoner; I mean to increase it, by bringing home to him the proof of his crimes, and to display them in all their force and turpitude.  It is my duty to do it; I feel it an obligation nearest to my heart.

FOOTNOTES: 

[8] See this letter in the Appendix to the Eighth and Sixteenth Charges, Vol.  IX. pp. 319-325, in the present edition.

SPEECH

ON

THE SIXTH ARTICLE OF CHARGE.

FOURTH DAY:  THURSDAY, MAY 7, 1789.

My Lords,—­When I had the honor last to address you from this place, I endeavored to press this position upon your minds, and to fortify it by the example of the proceedings of Mr. Hastings,—­that obscurity and inaccuracies in a matter of account constituted a just presumption of fraud.  I showed, from his own letters, that his accounts were confused and inaccurate.  I am ready, my Lords, to admit that there are situations in which a minister in high office may use concealment:  it may be his duty to use concealment from the enemies of his masters; it may be prudent to use concealment from his inferiors in the service.  It will always be suspicious to use concealment from his colleagues and cooerdinates in office; but when, in a money transaction, any man uses concealment with regard to them to whom the money belongs, he is guilty of a fraud.  My Lords, I have shown you that Mr. Hastings kept no account, by his own confession, of the moneys that he had privately taken, as he pretends, for the Company’s service, and we have but too much reason to presume for his own.  We have shown you, my Lords, that he has not only no accounts, but no memory; we have shown that he does not even understand his own motives; that, when called upon to recollect them, he begs to guess at them; and that as his memory is to be supplied by his guess, so he has no confidence in his guesses.  He at first finds, after a lapse of about a year and a half, or somewhat less, that he cannot recollect what his motives were to certain actions which upon the very face of them appeared fraudulent.  He is called to an account some years after, to explain