About eight months after the first transaction relative to Cheyt Sing, and which is just reported, that is, on the 5th of January, 1781, Mr. Hastings produced a demand to the Council for money of his own expended for the Company's service.[28] Here was no occasion for secrecy. Mr. Francis was on his passage to Europe; Mr. Wheler was alone left, who no longer dissented from anything; Mr. Hastings was in effect himself the whole Council. He declared that _he_ had disbursed three lacs of rupees, that is, thirty-four thousand five hundred pounds, in secret services,--which having, he says, "been advanced from _my own private cash_, I request that the same may be repaid to me in the following manner." He accordingly desires three bonds, for a lac of Sicca rupees each, to be given to him in two of the Company's subscriptions,--one to bear interest on the eight per cent loan, the other two in the four per cent: the bonds were antedated to the beginning of the preceding October. On the 9th of the same month, that is, on the 9th of January, 1781, the three bonds were accordingly ordered.[29] So far the whole transaction appears clear, and of a piece. Private money is subscribed, and a public security is taken for it. When the Company's Treasury accounts[30] are compared with the proceedings of their Council-General, a perfect correspondence also appears. The three bonds are then [there?] entered to Mr. Hastings, and he is credited for principal and interest on them, in the exact terms of the order. So far the official accounts,--which, because of their perfect harmony, are considered as clear and consistent evidence to one body of fact. The second sort of document relative to these bonds (though the first in order of time) is Mr. Hastings's letter of the 29th of November, 1780.[31] It is written between the time of the expenditure of the money for the Company's use and the taking of the bonds. Here, for the first time, a very material difference appears; and the difference is the more striking, because Mr. Hastings claimed the _whole_ money as his own, and took bonds for it as such, _after_ this representation. The letter to the Company discovers that part of the money (the whole of which he had declared on record to be his own, and for which he had taken bonds) was not his, but the property of his masters, from whom he had taken the security. It is no less remarkable that the letter which represents the money as belonging to the Company was written about six weeks before the Minute of Council in which he claims that money as his own. It is this letter on which your Committee is to remark. Mr. Hastings, after giving his reasons for the application of the three lacs of rupees, and for his having for some time concealed the fact, says, "Two thirds of that sum I have raised _by my own credit_, and shall charge it in my official account; _the other third_ I have supplied from the cash in my hands belonging to the Honorable Company."[32]