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 circumstances 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 anticipation 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