The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

recent date of the command, it is not possible that it could be lost to his recollection; much
less is it possible that he could have understood the specific demand of an answer to
specific questions to be intended only as a reprehension for a former offence, viz., the
offence of withholding from the Directors that very explanation which he ought to have
given in the first instance. That the said Warren Hastings, in his answer to the said
questions, cautiously avoids affirming or denying anything in clear, positive terms, and
professes to recollect nothing with absolute certainty. That he has not, even now, informed
the Directors of the name of any one person from whom any part of the money in question
was received, nor what was the motive of any one person for giving the same. That he has,
indeed, declared, that his motive for lending to the Company, or depositing in their treasury
in his own name, money which he has in other places declared to be their property, was to
avoid ostentation, and that lending the money was the least liable to reflection; yet, when
he has stated these and other conjectural motives for his own conduct, he declares he will
not affirm, though he is firmly persuaded, that those were his sentiments on the occasion.
That of one thing only the said Warren Hastings declares he is certain, viz., "that it was his
design originally to have concealed the receipt of all the sums, except the second, even
from the knowledge of the Court of Directors, but that, when fortune threw a sum in his
way of a magnitude which could not be concealed, and the peculiar delicacy of his situation
at the time in which he received it made him more circumspect of appearances, he chose to
apprise his employers of it." That the said Warren Hastings informs the Directors, that he
had indorsed the bonds taken by him for money belonging to the Company, and lent by him
to the Company, in order to guard against their becoming a claim on the Company, as part
of his estate, in the event of his death; but he has not affirmed, nor does it anywhere appear,
that he has surrendered the said bonds, as he ought to have done. That the said Warren

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