in distress, that he declared he should have, at very nearly the period when this bribe became payable, a very large sum (I do not recollect the precise amount) in their treasury.  I cannot certainly tell when the cabooleat, or agreement, was made; yet I shall lay open something very extraordinary upon that subject, and will lead you, step by step, to the bloody scenes of Debi Sing.  Whilst, therefore, Mr. Hastings was carrying on these transactions, he was carrying them on without any reference to the pretended object to which he afterwards applied them.  It was an old, premeditated plan; and the money to be received could not have been designed for an exigency, because it was to be paid by monthly instalments.  The case is the same with respect to the other cabooleats:  it could not have been any momentary exigence which he had to provide for by these sums of money; they were paid regularly, period by period, as a constant, uniform income, to Mr. Hastings.

You find, then, Mr. Hastings first leaving this sum of money for a year and three months in the hands of Gunga Govind Sing; you find, that, when an exigence pressed him by the Mahrattas suddenly invading Bengal, and he was obliged to refer to his bribe-fund, he finds that fund empty, and that, in supplying money for this exigence, he takes a bond for two thirds of his own money and one third of the Company’s.  For, as I stated before, Mr. Larkins proves of one of these accounts, that he took, in the month of January, for this bribe-money, which, according to the principles he lays down, was the Company’s money, three bonds as for money advanced from his own cash.  Now this sum of three lacs, instead of being all his own, as it should appear to be in the month of January, when he took the bonds, or two thirds his own and one third the Company’s, as he said in his letter of the 29th of November, turns out, by Mr. Larkins’s account, paragraph 9, which I wish to mark to your Lordships, to be two thirds the Company’s money and one third his own; and yet it is all confounded under bonds, as if the money had been his own.  What can you say to this heroic sharper disguised under the name of a patriot, when you find him to be nothing but a downright cheat, first taking money under the Company’s name, then taking their securities to him for their own money, and afterwards entering a false account of them, contradicting that by another account?—­and God knows whether the third be true or false.  These are not things that I am to make out by any conclusion of mine; here they are, made out by himself and Mr. Larkins, and, comparing them with his letter of the 27th, you find a gross fraud covered by a direct falsehood.

We have now done with Mr. Larkins’s account of the bonds, and are come to the other species of Mr. Hastings’s frauds, (for there is a great variety in them,) and first to Cheyt Sing’s bribe.  Mr. Larkins came to the knowledge of the bond-money through Gunga Govind Sing and through Cantoo Baboo.  Of this bribe he was not in the secret originally, but was afterwards made a confidant in it; it was carried to him; and the account he gives of it I will state to your Lordships.