The defect of an entry corresponding with Mr.
Hastings's declaration in Council can be attributed only to one of these
four causes,--of which the want of foundation in his recorded assertion,
though very blamable, is the least alarming.
On the 29th of November following, Mr. Hastings communicated to the
Court of Directors some sort of notice of this transaction.[17] In his
letter of that date he varies in no small degree the aspect under which
the business appeared in his Minute of Consultation of the 26th of June.
In his letter he says to the Directors, "The subject is now become
obsolete; the fair hopes which I had built upon the prosecution of the
Mahratta war have been blasted by the dreadful calamities which have
befallen your Presidency of Fort St. George, and changed the object of
our pursuit from the _aggrandizement_ of your power to its
preservation." After thus confessing, or rather boasting, of his motives
to the Mahratta war, he proceeds: "My present reason for reverting to my
own conduct on the occasion which I have mentioned" (namely, his
offering a sum of money for the Company's service) "is to obviate _the
false conclusions or purposed misrepresentations_ which may be made of
it, either as an artifice of _ostentation_ or the effect of _corrupt
influence_, by assuring you that the money, _by whatever means it came
into my possession, was not my own_, that I had myself _no right_ to it,
nor would or could have received it but for the occasion which prompted
me to avail myself _of the accidental means_ which were at that instant
afforded me of accepting and converting it to the property and use of
the Company: and with this brief apology I shall dismiss the subject.
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