official control over them, at annual or other shorter periods, in order
that the expense already incurred may be checked and examined, and
similar expenses, if disapproved of, may be prohibited in time; that,
after a very long period is elapsed, all check and control over such
expenses is impracticable, and, if it were practicable in the present
instance, would be completely useless, since the said Warren Hastings,
without waiting for the consent of the Directors, did _resolve to
reimburse himself_. That the conduct of the said Warren Hastings, in
withholding these accounts for twelve years together, and then resolving
to reimburse himself without the consent of his employers, has been
fraudulent in the first instance, and in the second amounts to a denial
and mockery of the authority placed over him by law; and that he has
thereby set a dangerous example to his successors, and to every man in
trust or office under him.--That the mode in which he has reimbursed
himself is a crime of a much higher order, and greatly aggravates
whatever was already criminal in the other parts of this transaction.
That the said Warren Hastings, in declaring that he should reimburse
himself by crediting the Company by _a sum privately received_, has
acknowledged himself guilty of an illegal act in receiving money
_privately_. That he has suppressed or withheld every particular which
could throw any light on a conduct so suspicious in a Governor as the
_private_ receipt of money. That the general confession of the private
receipt of a large sum in gross, in which no circumstance of time,
place, occasion, or person, nor even the amount, is specified, tends to
cover or protect any act of the same nature (as far as a general
confession can protect such acts) which may be detected hereafter, and
which in fact may not make part of the gross sum so confessed, and that
it tends to perplex and defeat all inquiry into such practices.--That
the said Warren Hastings, in stating to the Directors that he has
resolved to reimburse himself in _a mode the most suitable to the