But in what court can a suit be instituted, and against whom, for the recovery of this balance of 40,000_l._ out of 95,000_l._?  I wish your Lordships to examine strictly this account,—­to examine strictly every part, both of the account itself, and Mr. Larkins’s explanation:  compare them together, and divine, if you can, what remedy the Company could have for their loss.  Can your Lordships believe that this can be any other than a systematical, deliberate fraud, grossly conducted?  I will not allow Mr. Hastings to be the man he represents himself to be:  he was supposed to be a man of parts; I will only suppose him to be a man of mere common sense.  Are these the accounts we should expect from such a man?  And yet he and Mr. Larkins are to be magnified to heaven for great financiers; and this is to be called book-keeping!  This is the Bengal account saved so miraculously on the 22d of May.

Next comes the Persian account.  You have heard of a present to which it refers.  It has been already stated, but it must be a good deal farther explained.  Mr. Larkins states that this account was taken from a paper, of which three lines, and only three lines, were read to him by a Persian moonshee; and it is not pretended that this was the whole of it.  The three lines read are as follows.

“From the Nabob” (meaning the Nabob
  of Oude) “to the Governor-General,
  six lac L60,000

From Hussein Reza Khan and Hyder Beg
  Khan to ditto, three lac 30,000

And ditto to Mrs. Hastings, one lac 10,000.”

Here, I say, are the three lines that were read by a Persian moonshee.  Is he a man you can call to account for these particulars?  No:  he is an anonymous moonshee; his name is not so much as mentioned by Mr. Larkins, nor hinted at by Mr. Hastings; and you find these sums, which Mr. Hastings mentions as a sum in gross given to himself, are not so.  They were given by three persons:  one, six lacs, was given by the Nabob to the Governor; another, of three lacs more, by Hussein Reza Khan [and Hyder Beg Khan?]; and a third, one lac, by both of them clubbing, as a present to Mrs. Hastings.  This is the first discovery that appears of Mrs. Hastings having been concerned in receiving presents for the Governor-General and others, in addition to Gunga Govind Sing, Cantoo Baboo, and Mr. Croftes.  Now, if this money was not received for the Company, is it proper and right to take it from Mrs. Hastings?  Is there honor and justice in taking from a lady a gratuitous present made to her?  Yet Mr. Hastings says he has applied it all to the Company’s service.  He has done ill, in suffering it to be received at all, if she has not justly and properly received it.  Whether, in fact, she ever received this money at all, she not being upon the spot, as I can find, at the time, (though, to be sure, a present might be sent her,) I neither affirm nor deny, farther than that, as Mr. Larkins says, there was a sum of