We have now got Mr. Hastings in England, where you will suppose some satisfactory account of all these matters would be obtained from him. One would suppose, that, on his arrival in London, he would have been a little quickened by a menace, as he expresses it, which had been thrown out against him in the House of Commons, that an inquiry would be made into his conduct; and the Directors, apprehensive of the same thing, thought it good gently to insinuate to him by a letter, written by whom and how we do not know, that he ought to give some explanation of these accounts. This produced a letter which I believe in the business of the whole world cannot be paralleled: not even himself could be his parallel in this. Never did inventive folly, working upon conscious guilt, and throwing each other totally in confusion, ever produce such a false, fraudulent, prevaricating letter as this, which is now to be given to you. You have seen him at Patna, at Calcutta, in the country, on the Ganges: now you see him at the waters at Cheltenham; and you will find his letter from that place to comprehend the substance of all his former letters, and to be a digest of all the falsity, fraud, and nonsense contained in the whole of them. Here it is, and your Lordships will suffer it to be read. I must beg your patience; I must acknowledge that it has been the most difficult of all things to explain, but much more difficult to make pleasant and not wearisome, falsity and fraud pursued through all its artifices; and therefore, as it has been the most painful work to us to unravel fraud and prevarication, so there is nothing that more calls for the attention, the patience, the vigilance, and the scrutiny of an exact court of justice. But as you have already had almost the whole of the man, do not think it too much to hear the rest in this letter from Cheltenham. It is dated, Cheltenham, 11th of July, 1785, addressed to William Devaynes, Esquire;[8] and it begins thus:-- "Sir,--The Honorable Court of Directors, in their general letter to Bengal by the 'Surprise,' dated the 16th of March, 1784, were pleased to express their desire that I should inform them of the periods when each sum of the presents mentioned in my address of the 22d May, 1782, was received,--what were my motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the Council, or of the Court of Directors,--and what were my reasons for taking bonds for part of these sums, and for paying other sums into the treasury as deposits, on my own account."