Of this irregularity Mr. Hastings himself appears in some degree sensible.  He conceives it possible that his transactions of this nature may to the Court of Directors seem unsatisfactory.  He, however, puts it hypothetically:  “If to you,” says he, “who are accustomed to view business in an official and regular light, they should appear unprecedented, if not improper."[47] He just conceives it possible that in an official money transaction the Directors may expect a proceeding official and regular.  In what other lights than those which are official and regular matters of public account ought to be regarded by those who have the charge of them, either in Bengal or in England, does not appear to your Committee.  Any other is certainly “unprecedented and improper,” and can only serve to cover fraud both in the receipt and in the expenditure.  The acquisition of 58,000 rupees, or near 6000_l._, which appears in the sort of unofficial and irregular account that he furnishes of his presents, in his letter of May, 1782,[48] must appear extraordinary indeed to those who expect from men in office something official and something regular.  “This sum,” says he, “I received while I was on my journey to Benares."[49] He tells it with the same careless indifference as if things of this kind were found by accident on the high-road.

Mr. Hastings did not, indeed he could not, doubt that this unprecedented and improper account would produce much discussion.  He says, “Why these sums were taken by me, why they were (except the second) quietly transferred to the Company’s account, why bonds were taken for the first and not for the rest, might, were this matter to be exposed to the view of the public, furnish a variety of conjectures."[50]

This matter has appeared, and has furnished, as it ought to do, something more serious than conjectures.  It would in any other case be supposed that Mr. Hastings, expecting such inquiries, and considering that the questions are (even as they are imperfectly stated by himself) far from frivolous, would condescend to give some information upon them; but the conclusion of a sentence so importantly begun, and which leads to such expectations, is, “that to these conjectures it would be of little use to reply.”  This is all he says to public conjecture.

To the Court of Directors he is very little more complaisant, and not at all more satisfactory; he states merely as a supposition their inquiry concerning matters of which he positively knew that they had called for an explanation.  He knew it, because he presumed to censure them for doing so.  To the hypothesis of a further inquiry he gives a conjectural answer of such a kind as probably, in an account of a doubtful transaction, and to a superior, was never done before.

“Were your Honorable Court to question me upon these points, I would answer, that the sums were taken for the Company’s benefit, at times in which the Company very much stood in need of them; that I either chose to conceal the first receipts from public curiosity by receiving bonds for the amount, or possibly acted without any studied design which my memory could at this distance of time verify."[51]