I shall ever look forward with anxiety to prove my devotion and
gratitude to her most gracious Majesty, for signal acts of justice and
favour, and to your Royal Highness for this highly-appreciated mark of
your consideration."

A token of the estimation in which Lord Dundonald was at length held by
all classes of his countrymen may here be recorded. After frequent
refusal, on the ground of his age and love of privacy, he consented, in
May, 1856, to seek admission to the United Service Club. Its members,
thereupon, at once resolved, at the proposal of Vice-Admiral Sir George
F. Seymour, which was seconded by Lieutenant-General Sir C. F. Smith, "to
invite that highly-distinguished officer, Admiral the Earl of Dundonald,
to become an honorary member of the Club, until the time of his
lordship's ballot takes place."

In spite of compliments like these, however, it was his earnest desire
that, before his life was ended, every shadow which had darkened it
might be cleared away, and that he might not pass into the grave without
the assurance that he was formally, and in every respect, acquitted of
the unjust charges brought against him nearly half a century before.
While one single consequence of those charges remained in force, he
considered that he was not so acquitted, and with this object he
laboured to the last.

"I venture to remind your lordship," he wrote to Lord Palmerston, on the
26th of May, "that the undeviating rectitude of my conduct through a
long life has already induced the Crown, in the exercise of its justice,
to restore my rank and honours. There yet remains, my dear lord, a
gracious and important act to perform, namely, to order my banner to be
replaced in King Henry VII.'s Chapel, and to direct the repayment of the
fine inflicted by the Court of King's Bench, and the restoration of my
half-pay suspended during my removal from the naval service. Unless
these be done, I shall descend to my grave with the consciousness, not
only that justice has not fully been done to me, but under the painful
conviction that its omission will be construed to the injury of my
character in the estimation of posterity. Independently of the justice
of this claim on its own merits, I venture to express a hope that your
lordship will admit that, during my temporary absence from the naval
service, my exertions tended materially to promote the interests of our
country by opening to commerce the ports of the Pacific and those of a