means_ which were at that instant
afforded me of accepting and converting it to the property and use of
the Company: and with this brief apology I shall dismiss the subject."

The apology is brief indeed, considering the nature of the transaction;
and what is more material than its length or its shortness, it is in all
points unsatisfactory. The matter becomes, if possible, more obscure by
his explanation. Here was money received by Mr. Hastings, which,
according to his own judgment, he had no right to receive; it was money
which, "but for the occasion that prompted him, he could not have
accepted"; it was money which came into his, and from his into the
Company's hands, by ways and means undescribed, and from persons
unnamed: yet, though apprehensive of false conclusions and purposed
misrepresentations, he gives his employers no insight whatsoever into a
matter which of all others stood in the greatest need of a full and
clear elucidation.

Although he chooses to omit this essential point, he expresses the most
anxious solicitude to clear himself of the charges that might be made
against him, of the artifices of ostentation, and of corrupt influence.
To discover, if possible, the ground for apprehending such imputations,
your Committee adverted to the circumstances in which he stood at the
time: they found that this letter was dispatched about the time that
Mr. Francis took his passage for England; his fear of misrepresentation
may therefore allude to something which passed in conversation between
him and that gentleman at the time the offer was made.

It was not easy, on the mere face of his offer, to give an ill turn to
it. The act, as it stands on the Minute, is not only disinterested, but
generous and public-spirited. If Mr. Hastings apprehended
misrepresentation from Mr. Francis, or from any other person, your
Committee conceive that he did not employ proper means for defeating the
ill designs of his adversaries. On the contrary, the course he has taken
in his letter to the Court of Directors is calculated to excite doubts
and suspicions in minds the most favorably disposed to him. Some degree
of ostentation is not extremely blamable at a time when a man advances
largely from his private fortune towards the public service. It is human
infirmity at the worst, and only detracts something from the lustre of
an action in itself meritorious. The kind of ostentation which is
criminal, and criminal only because it is