Hastings's agent, Major Scott. They had
found, on former occasions, that this gentleman was furnished with much
more early and more complete intelligence of the Company's affairs in
India than was thought proper for the Court of Directors; they therefore
examined him concerning every particular sum of money the receipt of
which Mr. Hastings had confessed in his account. It was to their
surprise that Mr. Scott professed himself perfectly uninstructed upon
almost every part of the subject, though the express object of his
mission to England was to clear up such matters as might be objected to
Mr. Hastings; and for that purpose he had early qualified himself by the
production to your Committee of his powers of agency. The ignorance in
which Mr. Hastings had left his agent was the more striking, because he
must have been morally certain, that, if his conduct in these points
should have escaped animadversion from the Court of Directors, it must
become an object of Parliamentary inquiry; for, in his letter of the
15th [16th?] of December, 1782, to the Court of Directors, he expressly
mentions his fears that those Parliamentary inquiries might be thought
to have extorted from him the confessions which he had made.
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