"Copy of the particulars of the dates on which the component parts of sundry sums included in the account of sums received on the account of the Honorable Company by the Governor-General, or paid to their Treasury by his order, and applied to their service, were received for Mr. Hastings, and paid to the Sub-Treasurer."

The letter from Mr. Larkins consisted of two parts:  first, what was so much wanted, an account; next, what was wanted most of all to such an account as he sent, a comment and explanation.  The account consisted of two members:  one gave an account of several detached bribes that Mr. Hastings had received within the course of about a year and a half; and the other, of a great bribe which he had received in one gross sum of one hundred thousand pounds from the Nabob of Oude.  It appeared to us, upon looking into these accounts, that there was some geography, a little bad chronology, but nothing else in the first:  neither the persons who took the money, nor the persons from whom it was taken, nor the ends for which it was given, nor any other circumstances are mentioned.

The first thing we saw was Dinagepore.  I believe you know this piece of geography,—­that it is one of the provinces of the kingdom of Bengal.  We then have a long series of months, with a number of sums added to them; and in the end it is said, that on the 18th and 19th of Asin, (meaning part of September and part of October,) were paid to Mr. Croftes two lac of rupees; and then remains one lac, which was taken from a sum of three lac six thousand nine hundred and seventy-three rupees.  After we had waited for Mr. Hastings’s own account, after it had been pursued through a series of correspondence in vain, after his agents had come to England to explain it, this is the explanation that your Lordships have got of this first article, Dinagepore.  Not the person paid to, not the person paying, are mentioned, nor any other circumstance, except the signature, G.G.S.:  this might serve for George Gilbert Sanders, or any other name you please; and seeing Croftes above it, you might imagine it was an Englishman.  And this, which I call a geographical and a chronological account, is the only account we have.  Mr. Larkins, upon the mere face of the account, sadly disappoints us; and I will venture to say that in matters of account Bengal book-keeping is as remote from good book-keeping as the Bengal painches are remote from all the rules of good composition.  We have, however, got some light:  namely, that one G.G.S. has paid some money to Mr. Croftes for some purpose, but from whom we know not, nor where; that there is a place called Dinagepore; and that Mr. Hastings received some money from somebody in Dinagepore.