My Lords, here is, in my opinion, a discovery very well worthy your Lordships’ attention; here is the accountant-general of the Company, who declares, and fixes it as a point of honor, that he would not have made a discovery so important to them, if Mr. Hastings himself had not authorized him to make it:  a point to which he considers himself bound by his honor to adhere.  Let us see what becomes of us, when the principle of honor is so debauched and perverted.  A principle of honor, as long as it is connected with virtue, adds no small efficacy to its operation, and no small brilliancy and lustre to its appearance:  but honor, the moment that it becomes unconnected with the duties of official function, with the relations of life, and the eternal and immutable rules of morality, and appears in its substance alien to them, changes its nature, and, instead of justifying a breach of duty, aggravates all its mischiefs to an almost infinite degree; by the apparent lustre of the surface, it hides from you the baseness and deformity of the ground.  Here is Mr. Hastings’s agent, Mr. Larkins, the Company’s general accountant, prefers his attachment to Mr. Hastings to his duty to the Company.  Instead of the account which he ought to give to them in consequence of the trust reposed in him, he thinks himself bound by honor to Mr. Hastings, if Mr. Hastings had not called for that explanation, not to have given it:  so that, whatever obscurity is in this explanation, it is because Mr. Hastings did not authorize or require him to give a clearer.  Here is a principle of treacherous fidelity, of perfidious honor, of the faith of conspirators against their masters, the faith of robbers against the public, held up against the duty of an officer in a public situation.  You see how they are bound to one another, and how they give their fidelity to keep the secrets of one another, to prevent the Directors having a true knowledge of their affairs; and I am sure, if you do not destroy this honor of conspirators and this faith of robbers, that there will be no other honor and no other fidelity among the servants in India.  Mr. Larkins, your Lordships see, adheres to the principle of secrecy.

You will next remark that Mr. Hastings had as many bribe-factors as bribes.  There was confidence to be reposed in each of them, and not one of these men appears to be in the confidence of another.  You will find in this letter the policy, the frame, and constitution of this new exchequer.  Mr. Croftes seems to have known things which Mr. Larkins did not; Mr. Larkins knew things which Gunga Govind Sing did not; Gunga Govind Sing knew things which none of the rest of the confederates knew.  Cantoo Baboo, who appears in this letter as a principal actor, was in a secret which Mr. Larkins did not know; it appears likewise, that there was a Persian moonshee in a secret of which Cantoo Baboo was ignorant; and it appears that Mr. Palmer was in the secret of a transaction not intrusted to any of the rest.  Such is the