I should be removed out of the world.

I did not seek the Commission I undertook, but was partly Cajold, and
partly menac'd into it by the Lord Bellomont, and one Robert
Livingston of New York, who was the projector, promoter, and Chief
Manager of that designe, and who only can give your House a
satisfactory account of all the Transactions of my Owners. He was the
man admitted into their Closets, and received their private
Instructions, which he kept in his own hands, and who encouraged me in
their names to doe more than I ever did, and to act without regard to
my Commission. I would not Exceed my Authority, and took noe other
ships than such as had French passes, which I brought with me to New
England, and relyed upon for my Justification. But my Lord Bellomont
seized upon them together with my Cargoe, and tho he promised to send
them into England, yet has he detained part of the effects, kept these
passes wholly from me, and has stript me of all the Defence I have to
make, which is such Barbarous, as well as dishonorable usage, as I
hope Your Hon'ble House will not let an Englishman suffer, how
unfortunate soever his Circumstances are; but will intercede with his
Maj'ty to defer my tryall till I can have those passes, and that
Livingston may be brought under Your Examination, and Confronted by
me.[2]

[Footnote 2: Whether the presence of the French passes at the trial
for piracy would have brought about Kidd's acquittal may be doubted,
courts of justice being what they were; at all events Kidd, though he
clamored for them from the day of his arrival in the Downs (_Portland
MSS._, VIII. 78) till the day he was sentenced, was never able to
recover them. The admiralty court refused to consider them. "Where are
they?" said the Lord Chief Baron Ward. Kidd's counsel could only
reply, "We cannot yet tell whether they are in the Admiralty-Office,
or whether Mr. Jodrell [clerk of the House of Commons] hath them".
_State Trials_, V. 290. In point of fact the House of Commons, which
had had all the papers before it for examination, had on Apr. 16, on
information that Kidd desired the use of his papers at his trial,
ordered the clerk to deliver them to the secretary of the Admiralty.
_Commons Journal_, XIII. 379, 380, 496.--A photographic facsimile of
the pass of the _Cara_ (_Quedah_) _Merchant_ is in Paine, _Book of
Buried Treasure_, at p. 104.]

I cannot be so unjust to my selfe, as to plead to an Indictment till
the French