and meaning of the said act, declared upon a similar, but not so strong
a case,--that is, where the service done, and the present offered in
return for it, had taken place before the promulgation of the above laws
in India: on that occasion he declared, "that the exclusion by an act of
Parliament _admitted of no abatement or evasion_, wherever its authority
extended."

XXVII. That the said Warren Hastings, confiding in an interest which he
supposed himself to have formed in the East India House, did endeavor to
prevail on the Court of Directors to violate the said act, and to suffer
him to appropriate the money so illegally accepted by him to his own
profit, as a reward for his services.

XXVIII. That the said Warren Hastings has since declared to the Court of
Directors, that, when _fortune threw a sum in his way_ (meaning the sum
of money above mentioned) _of a magnitude which could not be concealed,
he chose to apprise his employers of it_:[15] thereby confessing, that,
but for the magnitude of the same rendering it difficult to be
concealed, he never would have discovered it to them. And the said
unlawful present being received at the time when, for reasons directly
contradictory of all his former recorded declarations, he did agree to
remove the aforesaid troops from the Nabob's dominions, and to recall
the pensioners aforesaid, it must be presumed that he did not agree to
give the relief (which he had before so obstinately refused) upon the
grounds and motives of justice, policy, or humanity, but in
consideration of the sum of money aforesaid, which, in a time of such
extreme distress in the Nabob's affairs, could not be rationally given,
except for those and other concessions stipulated for in the said
treaty, but which had on former occasions been refused.