t current of the expenditure of the squadron; but circumstances
compel me to a precision in this respect on personal grounds: the
Brazilian Government--though in possession of the documents and vouchers
afterwards transmitted by Captain Shepherd--publicly persisting in the
statement that I never furnished accounts of the expedition to
Pernambuco and Maranham--thus leaving the public to infer that the
disbursements just narrated, together with subsequent payments, had
never in reality been made! In other words, that I induced the crews to
go to sea--put down the revolution in the North--spent nine months in
pacifying the revolutionary provinces--and yet fraudulently withheld
200,000 dollars, the only sum supplied during the whole of the
expedition; the seamen meanwhile not only serving without reward, but
being content with my monopolizing the portion of the prize-money known
by them to have been awarded for the expulsion of the Portuguese in the
preceding year, and notoriously in my possession! Their forbearance
being so improbable as to refute itself, being contrary to common sense;
even in the absence of the vouchers, which were transmitted to the
Brazilian Government, _but never acknowledged_--I am able however to
account for the whole from documents no less convincing than the
vouchers transmitted.

It is true that nothing but the blind hatred of the old Portuguese
faction towards me could have originated such charges, and that hatred
was greatly increased by my pacification of the revolutionary
provinces--this being the death-blow to the intrigues recommended by
Palmella in favour of the mother country. As, however, the Brazilian
Government did not acknowledge to me the receipt of my accounts, which
must either exist to this day in the office of the Minister of Marine,
or must have been destroyed, for the sake of traducing my character in
justification of my prospective dismissal--it is incumbent on me to
supply, for the information of the Brazilian people, explanations which
have been repeatedly given to their Government, but which have not as
yet been made public through the medium of the press--and that not for
the information of the Brazilian people solely, but of the British
public, who, in the absence of official imputations recently
promulgated, have never before been put in possession of facts.

The Brazilian people may rest assured that whenever I received, for the
use of the squadron, sums which itself h