ossibly
can receive upon any occasion. For instance, strong report prevails that
a bribe of 40,000_l._ has been given, and the receiver expects that
information will be laid against him. He acknowledges that he has
received a bribe of 40,000_l._, but says that it was for the service of
the Company, and that it is carried to their account. And thus, by
stating that he has taken some money which he has accounted for, but
concealing from whom that money came, which is exactly Mr. Hastings's
case, if at last an information should be laid before the Company of a
specific bribe having been received of 40,000_l._, it is said by the
receiver, "Lord! this is the 40,000_l._ I told you of: it is broken into
fragments, paid by instalments; and you have taken it and put it into
your own coffers."

Again, suppose him to take it through the hand of an agent, such as
Gunga Govind Sing, and that this agent, who, as we have lately
discovered, out of a bribe of 40,000_l._, which Mr. Hastings was to have
received, kept back half of it, falls into their debt like him: I desire
to know what the Company can do in such a case. Gunga Govind Sing has
entered into no covenants with the Company. There is no trace of his
having this money, except what Mr. Hastings chooses to tell. If he is
called upon to refund it to the Company, he may say he never received
it, that he was never ordered to extort this money from the people; or
if he was under any covenant not to take money, he may set up this
defence: "I am forbidden to receive money; and I will not make a
declaration which will subject me to penalties": or he may say in India,
before the Supreme Court, "I have paid the bribe all to Mr. Hastings";
and then there must be a bill and suit there, a bill and suit here, and
by that means, having one party on one side the water and the other
party on the other, the Company may never come to a discovery of it. And
that in fact this is the way in which one of his great bribe-agents has
acted I shall prove to your Lordships by evidence.

Mr. Hastings had squeezed out of a miserable country a bribe of
40,000_l._, of which he was enabled to bring to the account of the
Company only 20,000_l._, and of which we should not even have known the
existence, if the inquiries pursued with great diligence by the House of
Commons had not extorted the discovery: and even now that we know the
fact, we can never get at the money; the Company can never receive it;
and befo