The next article is Patna. Your Lordships are not so ill acquainted with the geography of India as not to know that there is such a place as Patna, nor so ill acquainted with the chronology of it as not to know that there are three months called Baisakh, Asin, Chait. Here was paid to Mr. Croftes two lac of rupees, and there was left a balance of about two more. But though you learn with regard to the province of Dinagepore that there is a balance to be discharged by G.G.S., yet with regard to Patna we have not even a G.G.S.: we have no sort of light whatever to know through whose hands the money passed, nor any glimpse of light whatever respecting it.
You may expect to be made amends in the other province, called Nuddea, where Mr. Hastings had received a considerable sum of money. There is the very same darkness: not a word from whom received, by whom received, or any other circumstance, but that it was paid into the hands of Mr. Hastings's white banian, as he was commonly called in that country, into the hands of Mr. Croftes, who is his white agent in receiving bribes: for he was very far from having but one.
After all this inquiry, after so many severe animadversions from the House of Commons, after all those reiterated letters from the Directors, after an application to Mr. Hastings himself, when you are hunting to get at some explanation of the proceedings mentioned in the letter of the month of May, 1782, you receive here by Mr. Larkins's letter, which is dated the 5th of August, 1786, this account, which, to be sure, gives an amazing light into this business: it is a letter for which it was worth sending to Bengal, worth waiting for with all that anxious expectation with which men wait for great events. Upon the face of the account there is not one single word which can tend to illustrate the matter: he sums up the whole, and makes out that there was received five lac and fifty thousand rupees, that is to say, 55,000l., out of the sum of nine lac and fifty thousand engaged to be paid: namely,—
| From Dinagepore | 4,00,000 |
| From Nuddea | 1,50,000 |
| And from Patna | 4,00,000 |
| 9,50,000 | |
| Or | £95,000 |
Now you have got full light! Cabooleat signifies a contract, or an agreement; and this agreement was, to pay Mr. Hastings, as one should think, certain sums of money,—it does not say from whom, but only that such a sum of money was paid, and that there remains such a balance. When you come and compare the money received by Mr. Croftes with these cabooleats, you find that the cabooleats amount to 95,000l., and that the receipt has been about 55,000l., and that upon the face of this account there is 40,000l. somewhere or other unaccounted for. There never was such a mode of account-keeping, except in the new system of this bribe exchequer.
Your Lordships will now see, from this luminous, satisfactory, and clear account, which could come from no other than a great accountant and a great financier, establishing some new system of finance, and recommending it to the world as superior to those old-fashioned foolish establishments, the Exchequer and Bank of England, what lights are received from Mr. Hastings.
However, it does so happen that from these obscure hints we have been able to institute examinations which have discovered such a mass of fraud, guilt, corruption, and oppression as probably never before existed since the beginning of the world; and in that darkness we hope and trust the diligence and zeal of the House of Commons will find light sufficient to make a full discovery of his base crimes. We hope and trust, that, after all his concealments, and though he appear resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication, all his artifices will not be able to secure him from the siege which the diligence of the House of Commons has laid to his corruptions.
Your Lordships will remark, in a paragraph, which, though it stands last, is the first in principle, in Mr. Larkins's letter, that, having before given his comment, he perorates, as is natural upon such an occasion. This peroration, as is usual in perorations, is in favor of the parties speaking it, and ad conciliandum auditorem. "Conscious," he says, "that the concern which I have had in these transactions needs neither an apology nor an excuse,"—that is rather extraordinary, too!—"and that I have in no action of my life sacrificed the duty and fidelity which I owed to my honorable employers either to the regard which I felt for another or to the advancement of my own fortune, I shall conclude this address, firmly relying upon the candor of those before whom it may be submitted for its being deemed a satisfactory as well as a circumstantial compliance with the requisition in conformity to which the information it affords has been furnished,"—meaning, as your Lordships will see in the whole course of the letter, that he had written it in compliance with the requisition and in conformity to the information he had been furnished with by Mr. Hastings,—"without which it would have been as base as dishonorable for me spontaneously to have afforded it: for, though the duty which every man owes to himself should render him incapable of making an assertion not strictly true, no man actuated either by virtuous or honorable sentiments could mistakenly apprehend, that, unless he betrayed the confidence reposed in him by another, he might be deemed deficient in fidelity to his employers."
My Lords, here is, in my opinion, a discovery very well worthy your Lordships' attention; here is the accountant-general of the Company, who declares, and fixes it as a point of honor, that he would not have made a discovery so important to them, if Mr. Hastings himself had not authorized him to make it: a point to which he considers himself bound by his honor to adhere. Let us see what becomes of us, when the principle of honor is so debauched and perverted. A principle of honor, as long as it is connected with virtue, adds no small efficacy to its operation, and no small brilliancy and lustre to its appearance: but honor, the moment that it becomes unconnected with the duties of official function, with the relations of life, and the eternal and immutable rules of morality, and appears in its substance alien to them, changes its nature, and, instead of justifying a breach of duty, aggravates all its mischiefs to an almost infinite degree; by the apparent lustre of the surface, it hides from you the baseness and deformity of the ground. Here is Mr. Hastings's agent, Mr. Larkins, the Company's general accountant, prefers his attachment to Mr. Hastings to his duty to the Company. Instead of the account which he ought to give to them in consequence of the trust reposed in him, he thinks himself bound by honor to Mr. Hastings, if Mr. Hastings had not called for that explanation, not to have given it: so that, whatever obscurity is in this explanation, it is because Mr. Hastings did not authorize or require him to give a clearer. Here is a principle of treacherous fidelity, of perfidious honor, of the faith of conspirators against their masters, the faith of robbers against the public, held up against the duty of an officer in a public situation. You see how they are bound to one another, and how they give their fidelity to keep the secrets of one another, to prevent the Directors having a true knowledge of their affairs; and I am sure, if you do not destroy this honor of conspirators and this faith of robbers, that there will be no other honor and no other fidelity among the servants in India. Mr. Larkins, your Lordships see, adheres to the principle of secrecy.
You will next remark that Mr. Hastings had as many bribe-factors as bribes. There was confidence to be reposed in each of them, and not one of these men appears to be in the confidence of another. You will find in this letter the policy, the frame, and constitution of this new exchequer. Mr. Croftes seems to have known things which Mr. Larkins did not; Mr. Larkins knew things which Gunga Govind Sing did not; Gunga Govind Sing knew things which none of the rest of the confederates knew. Cantoo Baboo, who appears in this letter as a principal actor, was in a secret which Mr. Larkins did not know; it appears likewise, that there was a Persian moonshee in a secret of which Cantoo Baboo was ignorant; and it appears that Mr. Palmer was in the secret of a transaction not intrusted to any of the rest. Such is the labyrinth of this practical painche, or screw, that, if, for instance, you were endeavoring to trace backwards some transaction through Major Palmer, you would be stopped there, and must go back again; for it had begun with Cantoo Baboo. If in another you were to penetrate into the dark recess of the black breast of Cantoo Baboo, you could not go further; for it began with Gunga Govind Sing. If you pierce the breast of Gunga Govind Sing, you are again stopped; a Persian moonshee was the confidential agent. If you get beyond this, you find Mr. Larkins knew something which the others did not; and at last you find Mr. Hastings did not put entire confidence in any of them. You will see, by this letter, that he kept his accounts in all colors, black, white, and mezzotinto; that he kept them in all languages,—in Persian, in Bengalee, and in a language which, I believe, is neither Persian nor Bengalee, nor any other known in the world, but a language in which Mr. Hastings found it proper to keep his accounts and to transact his business. The persons carrying on the accounts are Mr. Larkins, an Englishman, Cantoo Baboo, a Gentoo, and a Persian moonshee, probably a Mahometan. So all languages, all religions, all descriptions of men are to keep the account of these bribes, and to make out this valuable account which Mr. Larkins gave you!