as going out of the
ordinary roads for their advantage;[22] and all this on the credit of
supplies derived from the gift of a man whom he treats with the utmost
severity, and whom he accuses, in this particular, of disaffection to
the Company's cause and interests.

With 23,000_l._ of the Rajah's money in his pocket, he persecutes him to
his destruction,--assigning for a reason, that his reliance on the
Rajah's faith, and his breach of it, were the principal causes that _no
other_ provision was made for the detachment on the specific expedition
to which the Rajah's specific money was to be applied. The Rajah had
given it to be disposed of by Mr. Hastings; and if it was not disposed
of in the best manner for the accomplishing his objects, the accuser
himself is the criminal.

To take money for the forbearance of a just demand would have been
corrupt only; but to urge unjust public demands,--to accept private
pecuniary favors in the course of those demands,--and, on the pretence
of delay or refusal, without mercy to persecute a benefactor,--to refuse
to hear his remonstrances,--to arrest him in his capital, in his palace,
in the face of all the people,--thus to give occasion to an
insurrection, and, on pretext of that insurrection, to refuse all treaty
or explanation,--to drive him from his government and his country,--to
proscribe him in a general amnesty,--and to send him all over India a
fugitive, to publish the shame of British government in all the nations
to whom he successively fled for refuge,--these are proceedings to
which, for the honor of human nature, it is hoped few parallels are to
be found in history, and in which the illegality and corruption of the
acts form the smallest part of the mischief.

Such is the account of the first sum _confessed_ to be taken as a
present by Mr. Hastings, since the year 1775; and such are its
consequences. Mr. Hastings apologizes for this action by declaring "that
he would not have received the money but for the _occasion_, which
prompted him to avail himself of the accidental means which were at that
instant afforded him of accepting and converting it to the use of the
Company."[23] By this account, he considers the act as excusable only by
the particular occasion, by the temptation of accidental means, and by
the suggestion of the _instant_. How far this is the case appears by the
very next paragraph of this letter in which the account is given and in
which the apology i