the account of the Company, there was no subsequent change in his situation which could justify his departing from that intention. That, if his own fortune in the year 1784 was unequal to so heavy a charge, the state of his fortune at any earlier period must have been still more unequal to so heavy a charge. That the fact so asserted by the said Warren Hastings leads directly to an inference palpably false and absurd, viz., that, the longer a Governor-General holds that lucrative office, the poorer he must become. That neither would the assertion, if it were true, nor the inference, if it were admitted, justify the conduct avowed by the said Warren Hastings in resolving to reimburse himself out of the Company's property without their consent or knowledge.--That the account transmitted in this letter is styled by himself _an aggregate of a contingent account of twelve years_; that all contingent accounts should be submitted to those who ought to have an official control over them, at annual or other shorter periods, in order that the expense already incurred may be checked and examined, and similar expenses, if disapproved of, may be prohibited in time; that, after a very long period is elapsed, all check and control over such expenses is impracticable, and, if it were practicable in the present instance, would be completely useless, since the said Warren Hastings, without waiting for the consent of the Directors, did _resolve to reimburse himself_. That the conduct of the said Warren Hastings, in withholding these accounts for twelve years together, and then resolving to reimburse himself without the consent of his employers, has been fraudulent in the first instance, and in the second amounts to a denial and mockery of the authority placed over him by law; and that he has thereby set a dangerous example to his successors, and to every man in trust or office under him.--That the mode in which he has reimbursed himself is a crime of a much higher order, and greatly aggravates whatever was already criminal in the other parts of this transaction. That the said Warren Hastings, in declaring that he should reimburse himself by crediting the Company by _a sum privately received_, has acknowledged himself guilty of an illegal act in receiving money _privately_. That he has suppressed or withheld every particular which could throw any light on a conduct so suspicious in a Governor as the _private_ receipt of money. That the general confession of the private receipt of a large sum in gross, in which no circumstance of time, place, occasion, or person, nor even the amount, is specified, tends to cover or protect any act of the same nature (as far as a general confession can protect such acts) which may be detected hereafter, and which in fact may not make part of the gross sum so confessed, and that it tends to perplex and defeat all inquiry into such practices.--That the said Warren Hastings, in stating to the Directors that he has