1774.  Thus far all appeared fair upon the face of it; they took it for granted, as your Lordships would take it for granted, at the first view, that the tribute in reality had been paid up to the time stated.  The books were balanced:  you find a debtor; you find a creditor; every item posted in as regular a manner as possible.  Whilst they were examining this account, a Mr. Croftes, of whom your Lordships have heard very often, as accountant-general, comes forward and declares that there was a little error in the account.  And what was the error?  That he had entered the Mogul’s tribute for one year more than it had actually been paid.  Here we have the small error of a payment to the Mogul of 250,000_l._ This appeared strange.  “Why,” says Mr. Croftes, “I never discovered it; nor was it ever intimated to me that it had been stopped from October, 1773, till the other day, when I was informed that I ought not to have made an entry of the last payments.”  These were his expressions.  You will find the whole relation in the Bengal Appendix, printed by the orders of the Court of Directors.  When Mr. Croftes was asked a very natural question, “Who first told you of your mistake? who acquainted you with Mr. Hastings’s orders that the payment should be expunged from the account?” what is his answer?  It is an answer worthy of Mr. Middleton, an answer worthy of Mr. Larkins, or of any of the other white banians of Mr. Hastings:—­“Oh, I have forgotten.”  Here you have an accountant-general kept in ignorance, or who pretends to be ignorant, of so large a payment as 250,000_l._; who enters it falsely in his account; and when asked who apprised him of his mistake, says that he has really forgotten.

Oh, my Lords, what resources there are in oblivion! what resources there are in bad memory!  No genius ever has done so much for mankind as this mental defect has done for Mr. Hastings’s accountants.  It was said by one of the ancient philosophers, to a man who proposed to teach people memory,—­“I wish you could teach me oblivion; I wish you could teach me to forget.”  These people have certainly not been taught the art of memory, but they appear perfect masters of the art of forgetting.  My Lords, this is not all; and I must request your Lordships’ attention to the whole of the account, as it appears in the account of the arrears due to the King, annexed to your minutes.  Here is a kind of labyrinth, where fraud runs into fraud.  On the credit side you find stated there, eight lacs paid to the Vizier, and to be taken from the Mogul’s tribute, for the support of an army, of which he himself had stipulated to bear the whole expenses.  These eight lacs are thus fraudulently accounted for upon the face of the thing; and with respect to eighteen lacs, the remainder of the tribute, there is no account given of it at all.  This sum Mr. Hastings must, therefore, have pocketed for his own use, or that of his gang of peculators; and whilst he was pretending to save you eight lacs by one fraud, he committed another fraud of eighteen lacs for himself:  and this is the method by which one act of peculation begets another in the economy of fraud.