"_at any time_ possessed that degree of
confidence from my _immediate_ employers which they have never withheld
from the _meanest_ of my predecessors, I should have disdained to use
these attentions."

Who the _meanest_ of Mr. Hastings's predecessors were does not appear to
your Committee; nor are they able to discern the ground of propriety or
decency for his assuming to himself a right to call any of them mean
persons. But if such mean persons have possessed that degree of
confidence from his immediate employers which for so many years he had
not possessed "_at any time_," inferences must be drawn from thence very
unfavorable to one or the other of the parties, or perhaps to both. The
attentions which he practises and disdains can in this case be of no
service to himself, his employers, or the public; the only attention at
all effectual towards extenuating, or in some degree atoning for, the
guilt of having taken money from individuals illegally was to be full
and fair in his confession of all the particulars of his offence. This
might not obtain that confidence which at no time he has enjoyed, but
still the Company and the nation might derive essential benefit from it;
the Directors might be able to afford redress to the sufferers; and by
his laying open the concealed channels of abuse, means might be
furnished for the better discovery, and possibly for the prevention, or
at least for the restraint, of a practice of the most dangerous
nature,--a practice of which the mere prohibition, without the means of
detection, must ever prove, as hitherto it had proved, altogether
frivolous.

Your Committee, considering that so long a time had elapsed without any
of that information which the Directors expected, and perceiving that
this receipt of sums of money under color of gift seemed a growing evil,
ordered the attendance of Mr. Hastings's agent, Major Scott. They had
found, on former occasions, that this gentleman was furnished with much
more early and more complete intelligence of the Company's affairs in
India than was thought proper for the Court of Directors; they therefore
examined him concerning every particular sum of money the receipt of
which Mr. Hastings had confessed in his account. It was to their
surprise that Mr. Scott professed himself perfectly uninstructed upon
almost every part of the subject, though the express object of his
mission to England was to clear up such matters as might be objected to
Mr. Ha