It appeared to your Committee that the money offered for that service, which was to forward the operations of a detachment under Colonel Camac in an expedition against one of the Mahratta chiefs, was not accepted. And your Committee, having directed search to be made for any sums of money paid into the Treasury by Mr. Hastings for this service, found, that, notwithstanding his assertion of having deposited "two lacs of rupees, or within a trifle of that sum, in the hands of the sub-treasurer," no entry whatsoever of that or any other payment by the Governor-General was made in the Treasury accounts at or about that time.[16] This circumstance appeared very striking to your Committee, as the non-appearance in the Company's books of the article in question must be owing to one or other of these four causes:--That the assertion of Mr. Hastings, of his having paid in near two lacs of rupees at that time, was not true; or that the sub-treasurer may receive great sums in deposit without entering them in the Company's Treasury accounts; or that the Treasury books themselves are records not to be depended on; or, lastly, that faithful copies of these books of accounts are not transmitted to Europe. The defect of an entry corresponding with Mr. Hastings's declaration in Council can be attributed only to one of these four causes,--of which the want of foundation in his recorded assertion, though very blamable, is the least alarming. On the 29th of November following, Mr. Hastings communicated to the Court of Directors some sort of notice of this transaction.[17] In his letter of that date he varies in no small degree the aspect under which the business appeared in his Minute of Consultation of the 26th of June. In his letter he says to the Directors, "The subject is now become obsolete; the fair hopes which I had built upon the prosecution of the Mahratta war have been blasted by the dreadful calamities which have befallen your Presidency of Fort St. George, and changed the object of our pursuit from the _aggrandizement_ of your power to its preservation." After thus confessing, or rather boasting, of his motives to the Mahratta war, he proceeds: "My present reason for reverting to my own conduct on the occasion which I have mentioned" (namely, his offering a sum of money for the Company's service) "is to obviate _the false conclusions or purposed misrepresentations_ which may be made of it, either as an artifice of _ostentation_ or the effect of _corrupt influence_, by assuring you that the money, _by whatever means it came into my possession, was not my own_, that I had myself _no right_ to it, nor would or could have received it but for the occasion which prompted me to avail myself _of the accidental means_ which were at that instant afforded me of accepting and converting it to the property and use of the Company: and with this brief apology I shall dismiss the subject."