) and to have
designed by a Mahometan foundation to expiate his offences. Be it so;
but why should Nobkissin pay for it? We will pass over this also. But
when your Lordships shall hear of what nature that foundation was, I
believe you will allow that a more extraordinary history never did
appear in the world.

In the first place, he stated to the Council, on the 18th of April,
1781, that in the month of November, 1780, a petition was presented to
him by a considerable number of Mussulmen, in compliance with which this
Mahometan college appears to have been founded. It next appears from his
statement, that in the April following, (that is, within about six
months after the foundation,) many students had finished their
education. You see what a hot-bed bribery and corruption is. Our
universities cannot furnish an education in six years: in India they
have completed it within six months, and have taken their degrees.

Mr. Hastings says, "I have supported this establishment to this time at
my own expense; I desire the Company will now defray the charge of it."
He then calculates what the expenses were; he calculates that the
building would cost about 6,000_l._, and he gets from the Company a bond
to raise money for paying this 6,000_l._ You apparently have the
building now at the public expense, and Mr. Hastings still stands
charged with the expense of the college for six months. He then proposes
that a tract of land should be given for the college, to the value of
about three thousand odd pounds a year,--and that in the mean time there
should be a certain sum allotted for its expenses. After this Mr.
Hastings writes a letter from the Ganges to the Company, in which he
says not a word about the expense of the building, but says that the
college was founded and maintained at his own expense, though it was
thought to be maintained by the Company; and he fixes the commencement
of the expense in September, 1779. But, after all, we find that the very
professor who was to be settled there never so much as arrived in
Calcutta, or showed his face there, till some time afterwards. And look
at Mr. Larkins's private accounts, and you will find that he charges the
expense to have commenced not until October, 1781. It is no error,
because it runs through and is so accounted in the whole: and it thus
appears that he has charged, falsely and fraudulently, a year more for
that establishment than it cost him.

At last, then, when he was