My Lords, you see, as to any direct explanation, that he fairly gives it up: he has used artifice and stratagem, which he knows will not do; and at last attempts to cover the treachery of his conduct by the treachery of his memory. Frequent applications were made to Mr. Hastings upon this article from the Company,--gentle hints, _gemitus columbae_,--rather, little amorous complaints that he was not more open and communicative; but all these gentle insinuations were never able to draw from him any further account till he came to England. When he came here, he left not only his memory, but all his notes and references, behind in India. When in India the Company could get no account of them, because he himself was not in England; and when he was in England, they could get no account, because his papers were in India. He then sends over to Mr. Larkins to give that account of his affairs which he was not able to give himself. Observe, here is a man taking money privately, corruptly, and which was to be sanctified by the future application of it, taking false securities to cover it, and who, when called upon to tell whom he got the money from, for what ends, and on what occasion, neither will tell in India nor can tell in England, but sends for such an account as he has thought proper to furnish. I am now to bring before you an account of what I think much the most serious part of the effects of his system of bribery, corruption, and peculation. My Lords, I am to state to you the astonishing and almost incredible means he made use of to lay all the country under contribution, to bring the whole into such dejection as should put his bribes out of the way of discovery. Such another example of boldness and contrivance I believe the world cannot furnish. I have already shown, amongst the mass of his corruptions, that he let the whole of the lands to farm to the banians; next, that he sold the whole Mahomedan government of that country to a woman. This was bold enough, one should think; but without entering into the circumstances of the revenue change in 1772, I am to tell your Lordships that he had appointed six Provincial Councils, each consisting of many members, who had the ordinary administration of civil justice in that country, and the whole business of the collection of the revenues.