My Lords, you will observe in this most astonishing account which he gives here, that several of these sums he meant to conceal forever, even from the knowledge of the Directors. Look back to his letter of 22d May, 1782, and his letter of the 16th of December, and in them he tells you that he might have concealed them, but that he was resolved not to conceal them; that he thought it highly dishonorable so to do; that his conscience would have been wounded, if he had done it; and that he was afraid it would be thought that this discovery was brought from him in consequence of the Parliamentary inquiries. Here he says of a discovery which he values himself upon making voluntarily, that he is afraid it should be attributed to arise from motives of fear. Now, at last, he tells you, from Cheltenham, at a time when he had just cause to dread the strict account to which he is called this day, first, that he cannot tell whether any one motive which he a.s.signs, either in this letter or in the former, were his real motive or not; that he does not know whether he has not invented them since, in consequence of a train of meditation upon what he might have done or might have said; and, lastly, he says, contrary to all his former declarations, "that he had never meant nor could give the Directors the least notice of them at all, as they had answered his purpose, and he had dismissed them from his remembrance." "I intended," he says, "always to keep them secret, though I have declared to you solemnly, over and over again, that I did not. I do not care how you discovered them; I have forgotten them; I have dismissed them from my remembrance." Is this the way in which money is to be received and accounted for?
He then proceeds thus:--"But when fortune threw a sum of money in my way of a magnitude which could not be concealed, and the peculiar delicacy of my situation at the time I received it made me more circ.u.mspect of appearances, I chose to apprise my employers of it, which I did hastily and generally: hastily, perhaps, to prevent the vigilance and activity of secret calumny; and generally, because I knew not the exact amount of which I was in the receipt, but not in the full possession. I promised to acquaint them with the result as soon as I should be in possession of it; and, in the performance of my promise, I thought it consistent with it to add to the amount all the former appropriations of the same kind: my good genius then suggesting to me, with a spirit of caution which might have spared me the trouble of this apology, had I universally attended to it, that, if I had suppressed them, and they were afterwards known, I might be asked what were my motives for withholding a part of these receipts from the knowledge of the Court of Directors and informing them of the rest, it being my wish to clear up every doubt."
I am almost ashamed to remark upon the tergiversations and prevarications perpetually ringing the changes in this declaration. He would not have discovered this hundred thousand pounds, if he could have concealed it: he would have discovered it, lest malicious persons should be telling tales of it. He has a system of concealment: he never discovers anything, but when he thinks it can be forced from him. He says, indeed, "I could conceal these things forever, but my conscience would not give me leave": but it is guilt, and not honesty of conscience, that always prompts him. At one time it is the malice of people and the fear of misrepresentation which induced him to make the disclosure; and he values himself on the precaution which this fear had suggested to him. At another time it is the magnitude of the sum which produced this effect: nothing but the impossibility of concealing it could possibly have made him discover it. This hundred thousand pounds he declares he would have concealed, if he could; and yet he values himself upon the discovery of it. Oh, my Lords, I am afraid that sums of much greater magnitude have not been discovered at all! Your Lordships now see some of the artifices of this letter. You see the variety of styles he adopts, and how he turns himself into every shape and every form. But, after all, do you find any clear discovery? do you find any satisfactory answer to the Directors" letter? does he once tell you from whom he received the money? does he tell you for what he received it, what the circ.u.mstances of the persons giving it were, or any explanation whatever of his mode of accounting for it? No: and here, at last, after so many years" litigation, he is called to account for his prevaricating, false accounts in Calcutta, and cannot give them to you.
His explanation of his conduct relative to the bonds now only remains for your Lordships" consideration. Before he left Calcutta, in July, 1784 [1781?], he says, when he was going upon a service which he thought a service of danger, he indorsed the false bonds which he had taken from the Company, declaring them to be none of his. You will observe that these bonds had been in his hands from the 9th or 15th of January (I am not quite sure of the exact date) to the day when he went upon this service, some time in the month of July, 1784 [1781?]. This service he had formerly declared he did not apprehend to be a service of danger; but he found it to be so after: it was in antic.i.p.ation of that danger that he made this attestation and certificate upon the bonds. But who ever saw them? Mr. Larkins saw them, says he: "I gave them Mr. Larkins."
We will show you hereafter that Mr. Larkins deserves no credit in this business,--that honor binds him not to discover the secrets of Mr.
Hastings. But why did he not deliver them up entirely, when he was going upon that service? for all pretence of concealment in the business was now at an end, as we shall prove. Why did he not cancel these bonds?
Why keep them at all? Why not enter truly the state of the account in the Company"s records? "But I indorsed them," he says. "Did you deliver them so indorsed into the treasury?" "No, I delivered them indorsed into the hands of my bribe-broker and agent." "But why not destroy them, or give them up to the Company, and say you were paid, which would have been the only truth in this transaction? Why did you not indorse them before? Why not, during the long period of so many years, cancel them?"
No, he kept them to the very day when he was going from Calcutta, and had made a declaration that they were not his. Never before, upon any account, had they appeared; and though the Committee of the House of Commons, in the Eleventh Report, had remarked upon all these scandalous proceedings and prevarications, yet he was not stimulated, even then, to give up these bonds. He held them in his hands till the time when he was preparing for his departure from Calcutta, in spite of the Directors, in spite of the Parliament, in spite of the cries of his own conscience, in a matter which was now grown public, and would knock doubly upon his reputation and conduct. He then declares they are not for his own use, but for the Company"s service. But were they then cancelled? I do not find a trace of their being cancelled. In this letter of the 17th of January, 1785, he says with regard to these bonds, "The following sums were paid into the treasury, and bonds granted for the same in the name of the Governor-General, in whose possession the bonds remain, with a declaration upon each, indorsed and signed by him, that he has no claim on the Company for the amount either of princ.i.p.al or interest, no part of the latter having been received."
To the account of the 22d of May, of the indors.e.m.e.nt, is added the declaration upon oath. But why any man need to declare upon oath that the money which he has fraudulently taken and concealed from another person is not his is the most extraordinary thing in the world. If he had a mind to have it placed to his credit as his own, then an oath would be necessary; but in this case any one would believe him upon his word. He comes, however, and says, "This is indorsed upon oath." Oath!
before what magistrate? In whose possession were the bonds? Were they given up? There is no trace of that upon the record, and it stands for him to prove that they were ever given up, and in any hands but Mr.
Larkins"s and his own. So here are the bonds, begun in obscurity and ending in obscurity, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, corruption to corruption, and fraud to fraud. This is all we see of these bonds, till Mr. Larkins, to whom he writes some letter concerning them which does not appear, is called to read a funeral sermon over them.
My Lords, I am come now near the period of this cla.s.s of Mr. Hastings"s bribes. I am a little exhausted. There are many circ.u.mstances that might make me wish not to delay this business by taking up another day at your Lordships" bar, in order to go through this long, intricate scene of corruption. But my strength now fails me. I hope within a very short time, to-morrow or the next court-day, to finish it, and to go directly into evidence, as I long much to do, to substantiate the charge; but it was necessary that the evidence should be explained. You have heard as much of the drama as I could go through: bear with my weakness a little: Mr. Larkins"s letter will be the epilogue to it. I have already incurred the censure of the prisoner; I mean to increase it, by bringing home to him the proof of his crimes, and to display them in all their force and turpitude. It is my duty to do it; I feel it an obligation nearest to my heart.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] See this letter in the Appendix to the Eighth and Sixteenth Charges, Vol. IX. pp. 319-325, in the present edition.
SPEECH
ON
THE SIXTH ARTICLE OF CHARGE.
FOURTH DAY: THURSDAY, MAY 7, 1789.
My Lords,--When I had the honor last to address you from this place, I endeavored to press this position upon your minds, and to fortify it by the example of the proceedings of Mr. Hastings,--that obscurity and inaccuracies in a matter of account const.i.tuted a just presumption of fraud. I showed, from his own letters, that his accounts were confused and inaccurate. I am ready, my Lords, to admit that there are situations in which a minister in high office may use concealment: it may be his duty to use concealment from the enemies of his masters; it may be prudent to use concealment from his inferiors in the service. It will always be suspicious to use concealment from his colleagues and coordinates in office; but when, in a money transaction, any man uses concealment with regard to them to whom the money belongs, he is guilty of a fraud. My Lords, I have shown you that Mr. Hastings kept no account, by his own confession, of the moneys that he had privately taken, as he pretends, for the Company"s service, and we have but too much reason to presume for his own. We have shown you, my Lords, that he has not only no accounts, but no memory; we have shown that he does not even understand his own motives; that, when called upon to recollect them, he begs to guess at them; and that as his memory is to be supplied by his guess, so he has no confidence in his guesses. He at first finds, after a lapse of about a year and a half, or somewhat less, that he cannot recollect what his motives were to certain actions which upon the very face of them appeared fraudulent. He is called to an account some years after, to explain what they were, and he makes a just reflection upon it,--namely, that, as his memory did not enable him to find out his own motive at the former time, it is not to be expected that it would be clearer a year after. Your Lordships will, however, recollect, that in the Cheltenham letter, which is made of no perishable stuff, he begins again to guess; but after he has guessed and guessed again, and after he has gone through all the motives he can possibly a.s.sign for the action, he tells you he does not know whether those were his real motives, or whether he has not invented them since.
In that situation the accounts of the Company were left with regard to very great sums which pa.s.sed through Mr. Hastings"s hands, and for which he, instead of giving his masters credit, took credit to himself, and, being their debtor, as he confesses himself to be at that time, took a security for that debt as if he had been their creditor. This required explanation. Explanation he was called upon for, over and over again; explanation he did not give, and declared he could not give. He was called upon for it when in India: he had not leisure to attend to it there. He was called upon for it when in Europe: he then says he must send for it to India. With much prevarication, and much insolence too, he confesses himself guilty of falsifying the Company"s accounts by making himself their creditor when he was their debtor, and giving false accounts of this false transaction. The Court of Directors was slow to believe him guilty; Parliament expressed a strong suspicion of his guilt, and wished for further information. Mr. Hastings about this time began to imagine his conscience to be a faithful and true monitor,--which it were well he had attended to upon many occasions, as it would have saved him his appearance here,--and it told him that he was in great danger from the Parliamentary inquiries that were going on.
It was now to be expected that he would have been in haste to fulfil the promise which he had made in the Patna letter of the 20th of January, 1782; and accordingly we find that about this time his first agent, Major Fairfax, was sent over to Europe, which agent entered himself at the India House, and appeared before the Committee of the House of Commons, as an agent expressly sent over to explain whatever might appear doubtful in his conduct. Major Fairfax, notwithstanding the character in which Mr. Hastings employed him, appeared to be but a letter-carrier: he had nothing to say: he gave them no information in the India House at all: to the Committee (I can speak with the clearness of a witness) he gave no satisfaction whatever. However, this agent vanished in a moment, in order to make way for another, more substantial, more efficient agent,--an agent perfectly known in this country,--an agent known by the name given to him by Mr. Hastings, who, like the princes of the East, gives t.i.tles: he calls him an incomparable agent; and by that name he is very well known to your Lordships and the world. This agent, Major Scott, who I believe was here prior to the time of Major Fairfax"s arrival in the character of an agent, and for the very same purposes, was called before the Committee, and examined, point by point, article by article, upon all that obscure enumeration of bribes which the Court of Directors declare they did not understand; but he declared that he could speak nothing with regard to any of these transactions, and that he had got no instructions to explain any part of them. There was but one circ.u.mstance which in the course of his examination we drew from him,--namely, that one of these articles, entered in the account of the 22d of May as a deposit, had been received from Mr. Hastings as a bribe from Cheyt Sing. He produced an extract of a letter relative to it, which your Lordships in the course of this trial may see, and which will lead us into a further and more minute inquiry on that head; but when that committee made their report in 1783, not one single article had been explained to Parliament, not one explained to the Company, except this bribe of Cheyt Sing, which Mr.
Hastings had never thought proper to communicate to the East India Company, either by himself, nor, as far as we could find out, by his agent; nor was it at last otherwise discovered than as it was drawn out from him by a long examination in the Committee of the House of Commons.
And thus, notwithstanding the letters he had written and the agents he employed, he seemed absolutely and firmly resolved to give his employers no satisfaction at all. What is curious in this proceeding is, that Mr.
Hastings, all the time he conceals, endeavors to get himself the credit of a discovery. Your Lordships have seen what his discovery is; but Mr.
Hastings, among his other very extraordinary acquisitions, has found an effectual method of concealment through discovery. I will venture to say, that, whatever suspicions there might have been of Mr. Hastings"s bribes, there was more effectual concealment in regard to every circ.u.mstance respecting them in that discovery than if he had kept a total silence. Other means of discovery might have been found, but this, standing in the way, prevented the employment of those means.
Things continued in this state till the time of the letter from Cheltenham. The Cheltenham letter declared that Mr. Hastings knew nothing of the matter,--that he had brought with him no accounts to England upon the subject; and though it appears by this very letter that he had with him at Cheltenham (if he wrote the letter at Cheltenham) a great deal of his other correspondence, that he had his letter of the 22d of May with him, yet any account that could elucidate that letter he declared that he had not; but he hinted that a Mr. Larkins, in India, whom your Lordships will be better acquainted with, was perfectly apprised of all that transaction. Your Lordships will observe that Mr.
Hastings has all his faculties, some way or other, in deposit: one person can speak to his motives; another knows his fortune better than himself; to others he commits the sentimental parts of his defence; to Mr. Larkins he commits his memory. We shall see what a trustee of memory Mr. Larkins is, and how far he answers the purpose which might be expected, when appealed to by a man who has no memory himself, or who has left it on the other side of the water, and who leaves it to another to explain for him accounts which he ought to have kept himself, and circ.u.mstances which ought to be deposited in his own memory.
This Cheltenham letter, I believe, originally became known, as far as I can recollect, to the House of Commons, upon a motion of Mr. Hastings"s own agent: I do not like to be positive upon that point, but I think that was the first appearance of it. It appeared likewise in public: for it was thought so extraordinary and laborious a performance, by the writer or his friends, (as indeed it is,) that it might serve to open a new source of eloquence in the kingdom, and consequently was printed, I believe, at the desire of the parties themselves. But however it became known, it raised an extreme curiosity in the public to hear, when Mr.
Hastings could say nothing, after so many years, of his own concerns and his own affairs, what satisfaction Mr. Larkins at last would give concerning them. This letter was directed to Mr. Devaynes, Chairman of the Court of Directors. It does not appear that the Court of Directors wrote anything to India in consequence of it, or that they directed this satisfactory account of the business should be given them; but some private communications pa.s.sed between Mr. Hastings, or his agents, and Mr. Larkins. There was a general expectation upon this occasion, I believe, in the House of Commons and in the nation at large, to know what would become of the portentous inquiry. Mr. Hastings has always contrived to have half the globe between question and answer: when he was in India, the question went to him, and then he adjourned his answer till he came to England; and when he came to England, it was necessary his answer should arrive from India; so that there is no manner of doubt that all time was given for digesting, comparing, collating, and making up a perfect memory upon the occasion.
But, my Lords, Mr. Larkins, who has in custody Mr. Hastings"s memory, no small part of his conscience, and all his accounts, did, at last, in compliance with Mr. Hastings"s desire, think proper to send an account.
Then, at last, we may expect light. Where are we to look for accounts, but from an accountant-general? Where are they to be met with, unless from him? And accordingly, in that night of perplexity into which Mr.
Hastings"s correspondence had plunged them, men looked up to the dawning of the day which was to follow that star, the little Lucifer, which with his lamp was to dispel the shades of night, and give us some sort of light into this dark, mysterious transaction. At last the little lamp appeared, and was laid on the table of this House of Commons, on the motion of Mr. Hastings"s friends: for we did not know of its arrival. It arrives, with all the intelligence, all the memory, accuracy, and clearness which Mr. Larkins can furnish for Mr. Hastings upon a business that before was nothing but mystery and confusion. The account is called,--
_"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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstance, 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.
The next article is _Patna_. Your Lordships are not so ill acquainted with the geography of India as not to know that there is such a place as Patna, nor so ill acquainted with the chronology of it as not to know that there are three months called Baisakh, Asin, Chait. Here was paid to Mr. Croftes two lac of rupees, and there was left a balance of about two more. But though you learn with regard to the province of Dinagepore that there is a balance to be discharged by G.G.S., yet with regard to Patna we have not even a G.G.S.: we have no sort of light whatever to know through whose hands the money pa.s.sed, nor any glimpse of light whatever respecting it.
You may expect to be made amends in the other province, called _Nuddea_, where Mr. Hastings had received a considerable sum of money. There is the very same darkness: not a word from whom received, by whom received, or any other circ.u.mstance, but that it was paid into the hands of Mr.
Hastings"s _white banian_, as he was commonly called in that country, into the hands of Mr. Croftes, who is his white agent in receiving bribes: for he was very far from having but one.
After all this inquiry, after so many severe animadversions from the House of Commons, after all those reiterated letters from the Directors, after an application to Mr. Hastings himself, when you are hunting to get at some explanation of the proceedings mentioned in the letter of the month of May, 1782, you receive here by Mr. Larkins"s letter, which is dated the 5th of August, 1786, this account, which, to be sure, gives an amazing light into this business: it is a letter for which it was worth sending to Bengal, worth waiting for with all that anxious expectation with which men wait for great events. Upon the face of the account there is not one single word which can tend to ill.u.s.trate the matter: he sums up the whole, and makes out that there was received five lac and fifty thousand rupees, that is to say, 55,000_l._, out of the sum of nine lac and fifty thousand engaged to be paid: namely,--
From Dinagepore 4,00,000 From Nuddea 1,50,000 And from Patna 4,00,000 -------- 9,50,000 -------- Or 95,000
Now you have got full light! _Cabooleat_ signifies a contract, or an agreement; and this agreement was, to pay Mr. Hastings, as one should think, certain sums of money,--it does not say from whom, but only that such a sum of money was paid, and that there remains such a balance.
When you come and compare the money received by Mr. Croftes with these cabooleats, you find that the cabooleats amount to 95,000_l._, and that the receipt has been about 55,000_l._, and that upon the face of this account there is 40,000_l._ somewhere or other unaccounted for. There never was such a mode of account-keeping, except in the new system of this bribe exchequer.
Your Lordships will now see, from this luminous, satisfactory, and clear account, which could come from no other than a great accountant and a great financier, establishing some new system of finance, and recommending it to the world as superior to those old-fashioned foolish establishments, the Exchequer and Bank of England, what lights are received from Mr. Hastings.
However, it does so happen that from these obscure hints we have been able to inst.i.tute examinations which have discovered such a ma.s.s of fraud, guilt, corruption, and oppression as probably never before existed since the beginning of the world; and in that darkness we hope and trust the diligence and zeal of the House of Commons will find light sufficient to make a full discovery of his base crimes. We hope and trust, that, after all his concealments, and though he appear resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication, all his artifices will not be able to secure him from the siege which the diligence of the House of Commons has laid to his corruptions.
Your Lordships will remark, in a paragraph, which, though it stands last, is the first in principle, in Mr. Larkins"s letter, that, having before given his comment, he perorates, as is natural upon such an occasion. This peroration, as is usual in perorations, is in favor of the parties speaking it, and _ad conciliandum auditorem_. "Conscious,"
he says, "that the concern which I have had in these transactions needs neither an apology nor an excuse,"--that is rather extraordinary, too!--"and that I have in no action of my life sacrificed the duty and fidelity which I owed to my honorable employers either to the regard which I felt for another or to the advancement of my own fortune, I shall conclude this address, firmly relying upon the candor of those before whom it may be submitted for its being deemed a satisfactory as well as a circ.u.mstantial compliance with the requisition in conformity to which the information it affords has been furnished,"--meaning, as your Lordships will see in the whole course of the letter, that he had written it in compliance with the requisition and in conformity to the information he had been furnished with by Mr. Hastings,--"without which it would have been as base as dishonorable for me spontaneously to have afforded it: for, though the duty which every man owes to himself should render him incapable of making an a.s.sertion not strictly true, no man actuated either by virtuous or honorable sentiments could mistakenly apprehend, that, unless he betrayed the confidence reposed in him by another, he might be deemed deficient in fidelity to his employers."
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 l.u.s.tre 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 l.u.s.tre 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 const.i.tution 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 princ.i.p.al 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 labyrinth of this practical _painche_, or screw, that, if, for instance, you were endeavoring to trace backwards some transaction through Major Palmer, you would be stopped there, and must go back again; for it had begun with Cantoo Baboo. If in another you were to penetrate into the dark recess of the black breast of Cantoo Baboo, you could not go further; for it began with Gunga Govind Sing. If you pierce the breast of Gunga Govind Sing, you are again stopped; a Persian moonshee was the confidential agent. If you get beyond this, you find Mr. Larkins knew something which the others did not; and at last you find Mr. Hastings did not put entire confidence in any of them. You will see, by this letter, that he kept his accounts in all colors, black, white, and mezzotinto; that he kept them in all languages,--in Persian, in Bengalee, and in a language which, I believe, is neither Persian nor Bengalee, nor any other known in the world, but a language in which Mr. Hastings found it proper to keep his accounts and to transact his business. The persons carrying on the accounts are Mr. Larkins, an Englishman, Cantoo Baboo, a Gentoo, and a Persian moonshee, probably a Mahometan. So all languages, all religions, all descriptions of men are to keep the account of these bribes, and to make out this valuable account which Mr. Larkins gave you!
Let us now see how far the memory, observation, and knowledge of the persons referred to can supply the want of them in Mr. Hastings. These accounts come at last, though late, from Mr. Larkins, who, I will venture to say, let the banians boast what they will, has skill perhaps equal to the best of them: he begins by explaining to you something concerning the present of the ten lac. I wish your Lordships always to take Mr. Hastings"s word, where it can be had,--or Mr. Larkins"s, who was the representative of and memory-keeper to Mr. Hastings; and then I may perhaps take the liberty of making some observations upon it.
_Extract of a Letter from William Larkins, Accountant-General of Bengal, to the Chairman of the East India Company, dated 5th August, 1786._
"Mr. Hastings returned from Benares to Calcutta on the 5th February, 1782. At that time I was wholly ignorant of the letter which on the 20th January he wrote from Patna to the Secret Committee of the Honorable the Court of Directors. The rough draught of this letter, in the handwriting of Major Palmer, is now in my possession. Soon after his arrival at the Presidency, he requested me to form the account of his receipts and disburs.e.m.e.nts, which you will find journalized in the 280th, &c., and 307th pages of the Honorable Company"s general books of the year 1781-2. My official situation as accountant-general had previously convinced me that Mr. Hastings could not have made the issues which were acknowledged as received from him by some of the paymasters of the army, unless he had obtained some such supply as that which he afterwards, viz., on the 22d May, 1782, made known to me, when I immediately suggested to him the necessity of his transmitting that account which accompanied his letter of that date, till when the promise contained in his letter of 20th January had entirely escaped his recollection."
The first thing I would remark on this (and I believe your Lordships have rather gone before me in the remark) is, that Mr. Hastings came down to Calcutta on the 5th of February; that then, or a few days after, he calls to him his confidential and faithful friend, (not his official secretary, for he trusted none of his regular secretaries with these transactions,)--he calls him to help him to make out his accounts during his absence. You would imagine that at that time he trusted this man with his account. No such thing: he goes on with the accountant-general, accounting with him for money expended, without ever explaining to that accountant-general how that money came into his hands. Here, then, we have the accountant making out the account, and the person accounting.
The accountant does not in any manner make an objection, and say, "Here you are giving me an account by which it appears that you have expended money, but you have not told me where you received it: how shall I make out a fair account of debtor and creditor between you and the Company?"
He does no such thing. There lies a suspicion in his breast that Mr.