And here I charge upon Mr. Hastings, that, by never taking a single step to defeat or detect the falsehood of any of those charges against him, and by punishing the authors of them, he has been guilty of such a subversion of all the principles of British government as will deserve, and will I dare say meet, your Lordships' most severe animadversion. In the course of this inquiry we find a sort of pause in his peculations, a sort of gap in the history, as if pages were torn out. No longer we meet with the same activity in taking money that was before found; not even a trace of complimentary presents is to be found in the records during the time whilst General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis formed the majority of the Council. There seems to have been a kind of truce with that sort of conduct for a while, and Mr. Hastings rested upon his arms. However, the very moment Mr. Hastings returned to power, peculation began again just at the same instant; the moment we find him free from the compulsion and terror of a majority of persons otherwise disposed than himself, we find him at his peculation again. My Lords, at this time very serious inquiries had begun in the House of Commons concerning peculation. They did not go directly to Bengal, but they began upon the coast of Coromandel, and with the principal governors there. There was, however, an universal opinion (and justly founded) that these inquiries would go to far greater lengths. Mr. Hastings was resolved, then, to change the whole course and order of his proceeding. Nothing could persuade him, upon any account, to lay aside his system of bribery: that he was resolved to persevere in. The point was now to reconcile it with his safety. The first thing he did was to attempt to conceal it; and accordingly we find him depositing very great sums of money in the public treasury through the means of the two persons I have already mentioned, namely, the deputy-treasurer and the accountant,--paying them in and taking bonds for them as money of his own, and bearing legal interest. This was his method of endeavoring to conceal some at least of his bribes: for I would not suggest, nor have your Lordships to think, that I believe that these were his only bribes,--for there is reason to think there was an infinite number besides; but it did so happen that they were those bribes which he thought might be discovered, some of which he knew were discovered, and all of which he knew might become the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry. Mr. Hastings said he might have concealed them forever. Every one knows the facility of concealing corrupt transactions everywhere, in India particularly. But this is by himself proved not to be universally true, at least not to be true in his own opinion; for he tells you, in his letter from Cheltenham, that he _would_ have concealed the Nabob's 100,000_l._, but that the magnitude rendered it easy of discovery. He, therefore, avows an intention of concealment.