y persuaded that these were my sentiments on the
occasion, yet I will not affirm that they were. Though I feel their
impression as the remains of a series of thoughts retained on my memory,
I am not certain that they may not have been produced by subsequent
reflection on the principal fact, combining with it the probable motives
of it. Of this I am certain, that it was my design originally to have
concealed the receipt of all the sums, except the second, even from the
knowledge of the Court of Directors. They had answered my purpose of
public utility, and I had almost totally dismissed them from my
remembrance. But when fortune threw a sum in my way of a magnitude which
could not be concealed, and the peculiar delicacy of my situation at the
time in which I received it made me more circumspect of appearances, I
chose to apprise my employers of it, which I did hastily and generally:
hastily, perhaps to prevent the vigilance and activity of secret
calumny; and generally, because I knew not the exact amount of the sum,
of which I was in the receipt, but not in the full possession. I
promised to acquaint them with the result as soon as I should be in
possession of it, and in the performance of my promise I thought it
consistent with it to add to the account all the former appropriations
of the same kind: my good genius then suggesting to me, with a spirit of
caution which might have spared me the trouble of this apology, had I
universally attended to it, that, if I had suppressed them, and they
were afterwards known, I might be asked what were my motives for
withholding part of these receipts from the knowledge of the Court of
Directors and informing them of the rest.

It being my wish to clear up every doubt upon this transaction, which
either my own mind could suggest or which may have been suggested by
others, I beg leave to suppose another question, and to state the terms
of it in my reply, by informing you that the indorsement on the bonds
was made about the period of my leaving the Presidency, in the middle of
the year 1781, in order to guard against their becoming a claim on the
Company, as part of my estate, in the event of my death occurring in the
course of the service on which I was then entering.

This, Sir, is the plain history of the transaction. I should be ashamed
to request that you would communicate it to the Honorable Court of
Directors, whose time is too valuable for the intrusion of a subject so
uninte