so distinctly in the Consultations and in the Treasury accounts, not one word is said; ten thousand pounds is absorbed, sinks, and disappears at once, and no explanation whatsoever concerning it is given; Mr. Hastings seems not yet to have decided to whose account it ought to be placed.  In this manner his debt to the Company, or the Company’s to him, is just what he thinks fit.  In a single article he has varied three times.  In one account he states the whole to be his own; in another he claims two thirds; in the last he gives up the claim of the two thirds, and says nothing to the remaining portion.

To make amends, however, for the suppression of this third bond, given with the two others in January, 1781, and antedated to the beginning of October, Mr. Hastings, in the above-mentioned general account subjoined to his letter of the 22d May, 1782, has brought to the Company’s credit a new bond.[35]

This bond is for 17,000_l._ It was taken from the Company (and so it appears on their Treasury accounts) on the 23d of November, 1780.  He took no notice of this, when, in January following, he called upon his own Council for the three others.  What is more extraordinary, he was equally silent with regard to it, when, only six days after its date, he wrote concerning the subject of the three other bonds to the Court of Directors; yet now it comes out, that that bond also was taken by Mr. Hastings from the Company for money which he declares he had received on the Company’s account, and that he entered himself as creditor when he ought to have made himself debtor.

Your Committee examined Major Scott concerning this money, which Mr. Hastings must have obtained in some clandestine and irregular mode; but they could obtain no information of the persons from whom it was taken, nor of the occasion or pretence of taking this large sum; nor does any Minute of Council appear for its application to any service.  The whole of the transaction, whatever it was, relative to this bond, is covered with the thickest obscurity.

Mr. Hastings, to palliate the blame of his conduct, declares that he has not received any interest on these bonds,—­and that he has indorsed them as not belonging to himself, but to the Company.[36] As to the first part of this allegation, whether he received the interest or let it remain in arrear is a matter of indifference, as he entitled himself to it; and so far as the legal security he has taken goes, he may, whenever he pleases, dispose both of principal and interest.  What he has indorsed on the bonds, or when he made the indorsement, or whether in fact he has made it at all, are matters known only to himself; for the bonds must be in his possession, and are nowhere by him stated to be given up or cancelled,—­which is a thing very remarkable, when he confesses that he had no right to receive them.

These bonds make but a part of the account of private receipts of money by Mr. Hastings, formerly paid into the Treasury as his own property, and now allowed not to be so.  This account brings into view other very remarkable matters of a similar nature and description.[37]