The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

perplexed, and wholly unsatisfactory, leads to a just and reasonable presumption that other
facts of the same nature have been concealed, since those which he has confessed might
have been forever, and that this partial confession was either extorted from the said Warren
Hastings by the dread of detection, or made with a view of removing suspicion, and
preventing any further inquiry into his conduct.

That the said Warren Hastings, in a letter to the Court of Directors dated 21st of February,
1784, has confessed his having privately received another sum of money, the amount of
which he has not declared, but which, from the application he says he has made of it, could
not be less than thirty-four thousand pounds sterling. That he has not informed the Directors
from whom he received this money, at what time, nor on what account; but, on the contrary,
has attempted to justify the receipt of it, which was illegal, by the application of it, which
was unauthorized and unwarrantable, and which, if admitted as a reason for receiving
money privately, would constitute a precedent of the most dangerous nature to the
Company's service. That, in attempting to justify the receipt and application of the said
money, he has endeavored to establish principles of conduct in a Governor which tend to
subvert all order and regularity in the conduct of public business, to encourage and facilitate
fraud and corruption in all offices of pecuniary trust, and to defeat all inquiry into the
misconduct of any person in whom pecuniary trust is reposed.—That the said Warren
Hastings, in his letter above mentioned, has made a declaration to the Court of Directors in
the following terms: "Having had occasion to disburse from my own cash many sums,
which, though required to enable me to execute the duties of my station, I have hitherto
omitted to enter in my public accounts, and my own fortune being unequal to so heavy a
charge, I have resolved to reimburse myself in a mode the most suitable to the situation of
your affairs, by charging the same in my Durbar accounts of the present year, and crediting

<<   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   >>

More intriguing information