"Although it is rather our wish to prevent evils in future than to enter into a severe retrospection of the past, and, where facts are doubtful, or attended with alleviating circumstances, to proceed with lenity, rather than to prosecute with rigor,--yet some of the cases are so flagrantly corrupt, and others attended with circumstances so oppressive to the inhabitants, that it would be unjust to suffer the delinquents to go unpunished. The principal facts[56] have been communicated to our solicitor, whose report, confirmed by our standing counsel, we send you by the present conveyance,--authorizing you, at the same time, to take such steps as shall appear proper to be pursued. "If we find it necessary, we shall return you the original covenants of such of our servants as remain in India, and have been anyways concerned in the undue receipt of money, in order to enable you to recover the same for the use of the Company by a suit or suits at law, to be instituted in the Supreme Court of Judicature in Bengal." Your Committee do not find that the covenants have been sent, or that any prosecution has been begun. A vast scene of further peculation and corruption, as well in this business as in several other instances, appears in the evidence of the Rajah Nundcomar. That evidence, and all the proceedings relating to it, are entered in the Appendix. It was the last evidence of the kind. The informant was hanged. An attempt was made by Mr. Hastings to indict him for a conspiracy; this failing of effect, another prosecutor appeared for an offence not connected with these charges. Nundcomar, the object of that charge, was executed, at the very crisis of the inquiry, for an offence of another nature, not capital by the laws of the country. As long as it appeared safe, several charges were made (which are inserted at large in the Appendix); and Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell seemed apprehensive of many more. General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis declared, in a minute entered on the Consultations of the 5th May, 1775, that, "in the late proceedings of the Revenue Board, it will appear that there is no species of peculation from which the Honorable Governor-General has thought proper to abstain." A charge of offences of so heinous a nature, so very extensive, so very deliberate, made on record by persons of great weight, appointed by act of Parliament his associates in the highest trust,--a charge made at his own board, to his own face, and transmitted to their common superiors, to whom they were jointly and severally accountable, this was not a thing to be passed over by Mr. Hastings; still less ought it to have perished in other hands. It ought to have been brought to an immediate and strict discussion. General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis ought to have been punished for a groundless accusation, if such it had been. If the accusation were founded, Mr. Hastings was very unfit for the high