. In this case
the presents might have been bestowed; if not with an assurance, at
least with a rational hope, of some mitigation in the oppressive
requisitions that were made by Mr. Hastings; for to give much
voluntarily, when it is known that much will be taken away forcibly, is
a thing absurd and impossible. On the other [one?] hand, the acceptance
of that gift by Mr. Hastings must have pledged a tacit faith for some
degree of indulgence towards the donor: if it was a free gift,
gratitude, if it was a bargain, justice obliged him to do it. If, on the
other hand, Mr. Hastings originally destined (as he says he did) this
money, given to himself secretly and for his private emolument, to the
use of the Company, the Company's favor, to whom he acted as trustee,
ought to have been purchased by it. In honor and justice he bound and
pledged himself for that power which was to profit by the gift, and to
profit, too, in the success of an expedition which Mr. Hastings thought
so necessary to their aggrandizement. The unhappy man found his money
accepted, but no favor acquired on the part either of the Company or of
Mr. Hastings.

Your Committee have, in another Report, stated to the House that Mr.
Hastings attributed the extremity of distress which the detachments
under Colonel Camac had suffered, and the great desertions which ensued
on that expedition, to the want of punctuality of the Rajah in making
payment of one of the sums which had been extorted from him; and this
want of punctual payment was afterwards assigned as a principal reason
for the ruin of this prince. Your Committee have shown to the House, by
a comparison of facts and dates, that this charge is wholly without
foundation. But if the cause of Colonel Camac's failure had been true as
to the sum which was the object of the public demand, the failure could
not be attributed to the Rajah, when he had on the _instant_ privately
furnished at least 23,000_l._ to Mr. Hastings,--that is, furnished the
identical money which he tells us (but carefully concealing the name of
the giver) he had from the beginning destined, as he afterwards publicly
offered, for this very expedition of Colonel Camac's. The complication
of fraud and cruelty in the transaction admits of few parallels. Mr.
Hastings at the Council Board of Bengal displays himself as a zealous
servant of the Company, bountifully giving from his own fortune, and in
his letter to the Directors (as he says himself)