tortures of a Parliamentary impeachment, he
discovered at length from whom he got this last bribe.

"The last part of the charge states, that, in my letter to the Court of
Directors of the 21st February, 1784, I have confessed to have received
another sum of money, the amount of which is not declared, but which,
from the application of it, could not be less than thirty-four thousand
pounds sterling, &c. In the year 1783, when I was actually in want of a
sum of money for my private expenses, owing to the Company not having at
that time sufficient cash in their treasury to pay my salary, I borrowed
three lacs of rupees of Rajah Nobkissin, an inhabitant of Calcutta, whom
I desired to call upon me with a bond properly filled up. He did so; but
at the time I was going to execute it he entreated I would rather
accept the money than execute the bond. I neither accepted the offer nor
refused it; and my determination upon it remained suspended between the
alternative of keeping the money, as a loan to be repaid, and of taking
it, and applying it, as I had done other sums, to the Company's use. And
there the matter rested till I undertook my journey to Lucknow, when I
determined to accept the money for the Company's use; and these were my
motives. Having made disbursements from my own cash for services, which,
though required to enable me to execute the duties of my station, I had
hitherto omitted to enter into my public accounts, I resolved to
reimburse myself in a mode most suitable to the situation of the
Company's affairs, by charging these disbursements in my durbar accounts
of the present year, and crediting them by a sum privately received,
which was this of Nobkissin's. If my claim on the Company were not
founded in justice, and _bona fide_ due, my acceptance of three lacs of
rupees from Nobkissin by no means precludes them from recovering that
sum from me. No member of this Honorable House suspects me, I hope, of
the meanness and guilt of presenting false accounts."

We do not _suspect_ him of presenting false accounts: we can prove, we
are now radically proving, that he presents false accounts. We suspect
no man who does not give ground for suspicion; we accuse no man who has
not given ground for accusation; and we do not attempt to bring before a
court of justice any charges which we shall not be able decisively to
prove. This will put an end to all idle prattle of malice, of groundless
suspicions of guilt, and of ill