The Directors appear to have been deceived by this representation, and in their letter of January, 1782,[18] consider the money as actually paid into their Treasury. Even under their error concerning the application of the money, they appear rather alarmed than satisfied with the brief apology of the Governor-General. They consider the whole proceeding as extraordinary and mysterious. They, however, do not condemn it with any remarkable asperity; after admitting that he might be induced to a temporary secrecy respecting the members of the board, from a fear of their resisting the proposed application, or any application of this money to the Company's use, yet they write to the Governor-General and Council as follows:—"It does not appear to us that there could be any real necessity for delaying to communicate to us immediate information of the channel by which the money came into Mr. Hastings's possession, with a complete illustration of the cause or causes of so extraordinary an event." And again: "The means proposed of defraying the extra expenses are very extraordinary; and the money, we conceive, must have come into his hands by an unusual channel; and when more complete information comes before us, we shall give our sentiments fully on the transaction." And speaking of this and other moneys under a similar description, they say, "We shall suspend our judgment, without approving it in the least degree, or proceeding to censure our Governor-General for this transaction." The expectations entertained by the Directors of a more complete explanation were natural, and their expression tender and temperate. But the more complete information which they naturally expected they never have to this day received.
Mr. Hastings wrote two more letters to the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors, in which he mentions this transaction: the first dated (as he asserts, and a Mr. Larkins swears) on the 22d of May, 1782;[19] the last, which accompanied it, so late as the 16th of December in the same year.[20] Though so long an interval lay between the transaction of the 26th of June, 1780, and the middle of December, 1782, (upwards of two years,) no further satisfaction is given. He has written, since the receipt of the above letter of the Court of Directors, (which demanded, what they had a right to demand, a clear explanation of the particulars of this sum of money which he had no right to receive,) without giving them any further satisfaction. Instead of explanation or apology, he assumes a tone of complaint and reproach, to the Directors: he lays before them a kind of an account of presents received, to the amount of upwards of 200,000l.,—some at a considerable distance of time, and which had not been hitherto communicated to the Company.
In the letter which accompanied that very extraordinary account, which then for the first time appeared, he discovers no small solicitude to clear himself from the imputation of having these discoveries drawn from him by the terrors of the Parliamentary inquiries then on foot. To remove all suspicion of such a motive for making these discoveries, Mr. Larkins swears, in an affidavit made before Mr. Justice Hyde, bearing even date with the letter which accompanies the account, that is, of the 16th of December, 1782, that this letter had been written by him on the 22d of May, several months before it was dispatched.[21] It appears that Mr. Larkins, who makes this voluntary affidavit, is neither secretary to the board, nor Mr. Hastings's private secretary, but an officer of the Treasury of Bengal.
Mr. Hastings was conscious that a question would inevitably arise, how he came to delay the sending intelligence of so very interesting a nature from May to December. He therefore thinks it necessary to account for so suspicious a circumstance. He tells the Directors, "that the dispatch of the 'Lively' having been protracted from time to time, the accompanying address, which was originally designed and prepared for that dispatch, and no other since occurring, has of course been thus long delayed."
The Governor-General's letter is dated the 22d May, and the "Resolution" was the last ship of the season dispatched for Europe. The public letters to the Directors are dated the 9th May; but it appears by the letter of the commander of the ship that he did not receive his dispatches from Mr. Lloyd, then at Kedgeree, until the 26th May, and also that the pilot was not discharged from the ship until the 11th June. Some of these presents (now for the first time acknowledged) had been received eighteen months preceding the date of this letter,—none less than four months; so that, in fact, he might have sent this account by all the ships of that season; but the Governor-General chose to write this letter thirteen days after the determination in Council for the dispatch of the last ship.
It does not appear that he has given any communication whatsoever to his colleagues in office of those extraordinary transactions. Nothing appears on the records of the Council of the receipt of the presents; nor is the transmission of this account mentioned in the general letter to the Court of Directors, but in a letter from himself to their Secret Committee, consisting generally of two persons, but at most of three. It is to be observed that the Governor-General states, "that the dispatch of the 'Lively' had been protracted from time to time; that this delay was of no public consequence; but that it produced a situation which with respect to himself he regarded as unfortunate, because it exposed him to the meanest imputations, from the occasion which the late Parliamentary inquiries have since furnished, but which were unknown when his letter was written." If the Governor-General thought his silence exposed him to the meanest imputations, he had the means in his own power of avoiding those imputations: he might have sent this letter, dated the 22d May, by the Resolution. For we find, that, in a letter from Captain Poynting, of the 26th May, he states it not possible for him to proceed to sea with the smallest degree of safety without a supply of anchors and cables, and most earnestly requests they may be supplied from Calcutta; and on the 28th May we find a minute from the Secretary of the Council, Mr. Auriol, requesting an order of Council to the master-attendant to furnish a sloop to carry down those cables; which order was accordingly issued on the 30th May. There requires no other proof to show that the Governor-General had the means of sending this letter seven days after he wrote it, instead of delaying it for near seven months, and because no conveyance had offered. Your Committee must also remark, that the conveyance by land to Madras was certain; and whilst such important operations were carrying on, both by sea and land, upon the coast, that dispatches would be sent to the Admiralty or to the Company was highly probable.
If the letter of the 22d May had been found in the list of packets sent by the Resolution, the Governor General would have established in a satisfactory manner, and far beyond the effect of any affidavit, that the letter had been written at the time of the date. It appears that the Resolution, being on her voyage to England, met with so severe a gale of wind as to be obliged to put back to Bengal, and to unload her cargo. This event makes no difference in the state of the transaction. Whatever the cause of these new discoveries might have been, at the time of sending them the fact of the Parliamentary inquiry was publicly known.
In the letter of the above date Mr. Hastings laments the mortification of being reduced to take precautions "to guard his reputation from dishonor."—"If I had," says he, "at any time possessed that degree of confidence from my immediate employers which they have never withheld from the meanest of my predecessors, I should have disdained to use these attentions."
Who the meanest of Mr. Hastings's predecessors were does not appear to your Committee; nor are they able to discern the ground of propriety or decency for his assuming to himself a right to call any of them mean persons. But if such mean persons have possessed that degree of confidence from his immediate employers which for so many years he had not possessed "at any time," inferences must be drawn from thence very unfavorable to one or the other of the parties, or perhaps to both. The attentions which he practises and disdains can in this case be of no service to himself, his employers, or the public; the only attention at all effectual towards extenuating, or in some degree atoning for, the guilt of having taken money from individuals illegally was to be full and fair in his confession of all the particulars of his offence. This might not obtain that confidence which at no time he has enjoyed, but still the Company and the nation might derive essential benefit from it; the Directors might be able to afford redress to the sufferers; and by his laying open the concealed channels of abuse, means might be furnished for the better discovery, and possibly for the prevention, or at least for the restraint, of a practice of the most dangerous nature,—a practice of which the mere prohibition, without the means of detection, must ever prove, as hitherto it had proved, altogether frivolous.