ve
been more than fifteen years of age. I mean not to impeach his
courage, but I think if circumstances be considered, and an
adequate idea of the confused state of the ship can be formed
by this Court, it will not appear probable that this young
gentleman should have been so perfectly unembarrassed as to
have been able to particularize the muscles of a man's
countenance, even at a considerable distance from him; and
what is still more extraordinary is, that he heard the captain
call to me from abaft the mizen to the platform where I was
standing, which required an exertion of voice, and must have
been heard and noticed by all who were present, as the captain
and Christian were at that awful moment the objects of every
one's peculiar attention; yet he who was standing between us,
and noticing the transactions of us both, could not hear what
was said.

'To me it has ever occurred that diffidence is very becoming,
and of all human attainments a knowledge of ourselves is the
most difficult; and if, in the ordinary course of life, it is
not an easy matter precisely to account for our own actions,
how much more difficult and hazardous must it be, in new and
momentous scenes, when the mind is hurried and distressed by
conflicting passions, to judge of another's conduct; and yet
here are two young men, who, after a lapse of near four years
(in which period one of them, like myself, has grown from a
boy to be a man), without hesitation, in a matter on which my
life is depending, undertake to account for some of my
actions, at a time, too, when some of the most experienced
officers in the ship are not ashamed to acknowledge they were
overcome by the confusion which the mutiny occasioned, and are
incapable of recollecting a number of their own transactions
on that day.

'I can only oppose to such open boldness the calm suggestions
of reason, and would willingly be persuaded that the
impression under which this evidence has been given is not in
any degree open to suspicion. I would be understood, at the
same time, not to mean anything injurious to the character of
Mr. Hallet, and for Mr. Hayward, I ever loved him, and must do
him the justice to declare, that whatever cause I may have to
deplore the effect of his evidence, or rather his