On this point your Committee will only add, that, in all the controversy between Mr. Hastings and the majority of the Council, he nowhere denies the receipt of this money.  In his letter to the Court of Directors of the 31st of July, 1775, he says that the Begum was compelled by the ill treatment of one of her servants, which he calls a species of torture, to deliver the paper to Mr. Goring; but he nowhere affirms that the contents of the paper were false.

On this conduct the majority remark, “We confess it appears very extraordinary that Mr. Hastings should employ so much time and labor to show that the discoveries against him have been obtained by improper means, but that he should take no step whatsoever to invalidate the truth of them.  He does not deny the receipt of the money:  the Begum’s answers to the questions put to her at his own desire make it impossible that he should deny it.  It seems, he has formed some plan of defence against this and similar charges, which he thinks will avail him in a court of justice, and which it would be imprudent in him to anticipate at this time.  If he has not received the money, we see no reason for such a guarded and cautious method of proceeding.  An innocent man would take a shorter and easier course.  He would voluntarily exculpate himself by his oath.”

Your Committee entertain doubts whether the refusal to exculpate by oath can be used as a circumstance to infer any presumption of guilt.  But where the charge is direct, specific, circumstantial, supported by papers and verbal testimony, made before his lawful superiors, to whom he was accountable, by persons competent to charge, if innocent, he was obliged at least to oppose to it a clear and formal denial of the fact, and to make a demand for inquiry.  But if he does not deny the fact, and eludes inquiry, just presumptions will be raised against him.

Your Committee, willing to go to the bottom of a mode of corruption deep and dangerous in the act and the example, being informed that Mr. Goring was in London, resolved to examine him upon the subject.  Mr. Goring not only agreed with all the foregoing particulars, but even produced to your Committee what he declared to be the original Persian papers in his hands, delivered from behind the curtain through the Nabob himself, who, having privilege, as a son-in-law, to enter the women’s apartment, received them from Munny Begum as authentic,—­the woman all the while lamenting the loss of her power with many tears and much vociferation.  She appears to have been induced to make discovery of the above practices in order to clear herself of the notorious embezzlement of the Nabob’s effects.