what they were, and he makes a just reflection upon it,—­namely, that, as his memory did not enable him to find out his own motive at the former time, it is not to be expected that it would be clearer a year after.  Your Lordships will, however, recollect, that in the Cheltenham letter, which is made of no perishable stuff, he begins again to guess; but after he has guessed and guessed again, and after he has gone through all the motives he can possibly assign for the action, he tells you he does not know whether those were his real motives, or whether he has not invented them since.

In that situation the accounts of the Company were left with regard to very great sums which passed through Mr. Hastings’s hands, and for which he, instead of giving his masters credit, took credit to himself, and, being their debtor, as he confesses himself to be at that time, took a security for that debt as if he had been their creditor.  This required explanation.  Explanation he was called upon for, over and over again; explanation he did not give, and declared he could not give.  He was called upon for it when in India:  he had not leisure to attend to it there.  He was called upon for it when in Europe:  he then says he must send for it to India.  With much prevarication, and much insolence too, he confesses himself guilty of falsifying the Company’s accounts by making himself their creditor when he was their debtor, and giving false accounts of this false transaction.  The Court of Directors was slow to believe him guilty; Parliament expressed a strong suspicion of his guilt, and wished for further information.  Mr. Hastings about this time began to imagine his conscience to be a faithful and true monitor,—­which it were well he had attended to upon many occasions, as it would have saved him his appearance here,—­and it told him that he was in great danger from the Parliamentary inquiries that were going on.  It was now to be expected that he would have been in haste to fulfil the promise which he had made in the Patna letter of the 20th of January, 1782; and accordingly we find that about this time his first agent, Major Fairfax, was sent over to Europe, which agent entered himself at the India House, and appeared before the Committee of the House of Commons, as an agent expressly sent over to explain whatever might appear doubtful in his conduct.  Major Fairfax, notwithstanding the character in which Mr. Hastings employed him, appeared to be but a letter-carrier:  he had nothing to say:  he gave them no information in the India House at all:  to the Committee (I can speak with the clearness of a witness) he gave no satisfaction whatever.  However, this agent vanished in a moment, in order to make way for another, more substantial, more efficient agent,—­an agent perfectly known in this country,—­an agent known by the name given to him by Mr. Hastings, who, like the princes of the East, gives titles:  he calls him an incomparable agent; and by that name he is very