s engaged in a correspondence with the Earl of Haddington, then First
Lord of the Admiralty, during the early part of 1842, which was closed
by the intimation, bitterly disappointing to Lord Dundonald, that the
Cabinet Council declined recommending the Queen to comply with his
earnest request.

Equally disappointing was the result of another application with the
same object which he made to Sir Robert Peel in the autumn of 1844. "Her
Majesty's servants," wrote Sir Robert Peel on the 7th of November, "have
had under consideration the letter which I received from your lordship,
bearing date the 10th of September. On reference to the proceedings
which were adopted in the year 1832, it appears that, previously to the
restoration of your lordship to your rank in the navy, a free pardon
under the Great Seal was granted to your lordship; and adverting to that
circumstance, and to the fact that thirty years have now elapsed since
the charges to which the free pardon had reference were the subject of
investigation before the proper judicial tribunal of the country, her
Majesty's servants cannot consistently with their duty advise the Queen
to reopen an inquiry into these charges."

Lord Dundonald failed to see, in the partial reversal, twelve years
before, of the unjust treatment to which he had been subjected eighteen
years before that, a reason for refusing to inquire whether there was
any injustice yet to be atoned for. He had not, however, very much
longer to wait for the object which he sought.

One of his grounds for desiring a public recognition of the efficacy of
his secret war-plans was a reasonable belief that, if it was seen that
through half a lifetime he had steadfastly avoided using for his private
advantage what might have been to him a vast source of wealth, in order
that the secret might be reserved solely for the benefit of his country,
it would be acknowledged to be incredible that, for insignificant ends,
he could have resorted to the gross and clumsy fraud attributed to him
at the Stock Exchange trial. And in this expectation he was right.
Nearly all the reparation that was now possible quickly followed upon
the investigation into the war-plans that was referred to in the last
chapter.

While the investigation was pending he was pained by a letter from Sir
Thomas Hastings, not unkind in itself, but showing that his real motives
for courting that investigation were not understood. "I made a
communication