As the Letter referred to in the VIIIth and XVIth Articles of Charge is not contained in any of the Appendixes to the Reports of the Select Committee, it has been thought necessary to annex it as an Appendix to these Charges.

APPENDIX

TO THE VIIITH AND XVITH CHARGES.

COPY of a LETTER from Warren Hastings, Esquire, to William Devaynes, Esq., Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, dated Cheltenham, 11th of July, 1785; and printed by Order of the House of Commons.

Lo William Devaynes, Esquire, Chairman of the Honourable the Court of Directors.

SIR,

The honourable court of directors, in their general letter to Bengal, by the Surprise, dated the 16th 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 22nd 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.

I have been kindly apprized, that the information required as above is yet expected from me. I hope, that the circumstances of my past situation, when considered, will plead my excuse for having thus long withheld it. The fact is, that I was not at the presidency when the Surprise arrived; and when I returned to it, my time and attention were so entirely engrossed to the day of my final departure from it by a variety of other more important occupations, of which, Sir, I may safely appeal to your testimony, grounded on the large portion contributed by myself of the volumes, which compose our consultations of that period, that the submission, which my respect would have enjoined me to pay to the command imposed on me, was lost to my recollection, perhaps from the stronger impres

sion, which the first and distant perusal of it had left on my mind, that it was rather intended as a reprehension for something, which had given offence in my report of the original transaction, than as expressive of any want of a further elucidation of it.

I will now endeavour to reply to the different questions, which have been stated to me, in as explicit a manner as I am able. To such information as I can give, the honourable court is fully entitled, and where that shall prove defective I will point out the easy means, by which it may be rendered more complete.

First, I believe I can affirm with certainty, that the several sums mentioned in the account transmitted with my letter, above mentioned, were received at or within a very few days of the dates, which are prefixed to them in the account; but as this contains only the gross sums, and each of these was received in different payments, though at no great distance of time, I cannot therefore assign a greater degree of accuracy to the account. Perhaps the honourable court will judge this sufficient for any purpose, to which their inquiry was directed; but if it should not be so, I will beg leave to refer for a more minute information, and for the means of making any investigation, which they may think it proper to direct, respecting the particulars of this transaction, to Mr. Larkins, your accomptant-general, who was privy to every process of it, and possesses, as I believe, the original paper, which contained the only account that I ever kept of it. In this each receipt was, as I recollect, specifically inserted, with the name of the person by whom it was made; and I shall write to him to desire, that he will furnish you with the paper itself, if it is still in being, and in his hands, or with whatever he can distinctly recollect concerning it.

For my motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the council, or of the court of directors, and for taking bonds for part of these sums, and paying others into the treasury as deposits on my own account, I have generally accounted in my letter to the honourable the court of directors of the 22nd May, 1782; namely, that "I either chose to conceal the first receipts from public curiosity, by receiving bonds for the amount, or possibly acted without any studied design, which my memory, at that distance of time, could verify; and that I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest."-It will not be expected, that I should be able to give a more correct explanation of my intentions after a lapse of three years, having declared at the time, that many particulars had escaped my remembrance; neither shall I attempt to add more than the clearer affirmation of the facts implied in that report of them, and such inferences as necessarily, or with a strong probability, follow them. I have said, that the three first sums of the account were paid into the Company's treasury without passing through my hands. The second of these was forced into notice by its destination and application to the expense of a detach

ment, which was formed and employed against Madajee Scindia, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Camac, as I particularly apprized the court of directors, in my letter of the 29th November, 1780. The other two were certainly not intended, when I received them, to be made public, though intended for public service, and actually applied to it. The exigencies of the government were at that time my own, and every pressure upon it rested with its full weight upon my mind. Wherever I could find allowable means of relieving those wants, I eagerly seized them; but neither could it occur to me as necessary to state on our proceedings every little aid, which I could thus procure, nor do I know how I could have stated it, without appearing to court favour by an ostentation, which I disdain, nor without the chance of exciting the jealousy of my colleagues by the constructive assertion of a separate and unparticipated merit, derived from the influence of my station, to which they might have laid an equal claim. I should have deemed it particularly dishonourable to receive for my own use money tendered by men of a certain class, from whom I had interdicted the receipt of presents to my inferiors, and bound them by oath not to receive them. I was therefore more than ordinarily cautious to avoid the suspicion of it which would scarcely have failed to light upon me, had I suffered the money to be brought directly to my own house, or to that of any person known to be in trust for me; for these reasons I caused it to be transported immediately to the treasury. There, you well know, Sir, it could not be received without being passed to some credit, and this could only be done by entering it as a loan, or as a deposit; the first was the least liable to reflection, and therefore I had obviously recourse to it. Why the second sum was entered as a deposit, I am utterly ignorant; possibly it was done without any special direction from me; possibly because it was the simplest mode of entry, and therefore preferred, as the transaction itself did not require concealment, having been already avowed.

Although I am firmly persuaded, that these were my sentiments on the occasion, yet I will not affirm that they were. Though I feel their impression as the remains of a series of thoughts retained on my memory, I am not certain, that they may not have been produced by subsequent reflection on the principal fact, combining with it the probable motives of it. Of this I am certain, that it was my design originally to have concealed the receipt of all the sums, except the second, even from the knowledge of the court of directors. They had answered my purpose of public utility, and I had almost totally dismissed them from my remembrance. But when fortune threw a sum in my way of a magnitude, which could not be concealed, and the peculiar delicacy of my situation at the time, in which I received it, made me more circumspect of appearances, I chose to apprize my employers of it, which I did hastily and gener

ally; hastily, perhaps to prevent the vigilance and activity of secret calumny; and generally, because I knew not the exact amount of the sum, of which I was in the receipt, but not in the full possession: I promised to acquaint them with the result as soon as I should be in possession of it, and in the performance of my promise I thought it consistent with it to add to the account all the former appropriations of the same kind; my good genius then suggesting to me, with a spirit of caution, which might have spared me the trouble of this apology, had I universally attended to it, that if I had suppressed them, and they were afterwards known, I might be asked, what were my motives for withholding part of these receipts from the knowledge of the court of directors, and informing them of the rest.

It being my wish to clear up every doubt upon this transaction, which either my own mind could suggest, or which may have been suggested by others, I beg leave to suppose another question, and to state the terms of it in my reply, by informing you, the endorsement on the bonds was made about the period of my leaving the presidency, in the middle of the year 1781, in order to guard against their becoming a claim on the Company, as part of my estate, in the event of my death occurring in the course of the service, on which I was then entering.

This, Sir, is the plain history of the transaction. I should be ashamed to request, that you would communicate it to the honourable court of directors, whose time is too valuable for the intrusion of a subject so uninteresting, but that it is become a point of indispensable duty; I must therefore request the favour of you to lay it, at a convenient time, before them. In addressing it to you personally, I yield to my own feelings of the respect, which is due to them as a body, and to the assurances, which I derive from your experienced civilities, that you will kindly overlook the trouble imposed by it.

I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your very
humble and most obedient servant,

Cheltenham, 11th July, 1785.

(Signed) WARREN HASTINGS.

4

LETTER TO WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ.

OCCASIONED BY THE ACCOUNT GIVEN IN A NEWSPAPER OF THE SPEECH MADE IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS, BY THE

OP

795.

MY DEAR SIR,

Beaconsfield, May 26th, 1795.

I have been told of the voluntary, which, for the entertainment of the House of Lords, has been lately played by his Grace the **** of *******, a great deal at my expense, and a little at his own. I confess I should have liked the composition rather better, if it had been quite new. But every man has his taste, and his Grace is an admirer of ancient music.

There may be sometimes too much even of a good thing. A toast is good, and a bumper is not bad; but the best toast may be so often repeated as to disgust the palate, and ceaseless rounds of bumpers may nauseate and overload the stomach. The ears of the most steady-voting politicians may at last be stunned with "three times three.' I am sure I have been very grateful for the flattering remembrance made of me in the toasts of the Revolution Society, and of other clubs formed on the same laudable plan. After giving the brimming honours to citizen Thomas Paine, and to citizen Dr. Priestley, the gentlemen of these clubs seldom failed to bring me forth in my turn, and to drink, "Mr. Burke, and thanks to him for the discussion he has provoked."

I found myself elevated with this honour; for, even by the collision of resistance, to be the means of striking out sparkles of truth, if not merit, is at least felicity.

Here I might have rested. But when I found that the