Uoc. No. 10. 9 



few forms remaining to put me in actual possession of the fund. These 

 I have the hope may be completed within the present month. 



The fund is invested in the stocks of this country, of which I shall, in 

 due time, have an exact account. The largest portion is in the three per 

 cent, annuities. The entire aggregate amounts to fully one hundred thou- 

 sand pounds; and this, according to my present information, exclusive of 

 about live thousand pounds to be reserved by the court to meet the an- 

 nual charge in favor of Madame la Batut during her life ; the sum produ- 

 cing it to "revert to the United States when she dies. 



As soon as the decree is formally made up, the accountant general of 

 the court will transfer all the stock to me, under its sanction, except the 

 small sum to be reserved as above. 



Having no special instructions as to what I am to do whh it, my pres- 

 ent intention is to sell the whole, at the best time and for the best prices 

 to^be commanded, and bring it over in gold for delivery to the Treasurer 

 of the United States, in fulfilment of the trust with which I am charged. 

 But I will reflect furtlier upon the mode of bringing it home, and adopt 

 that which, under all circumstances, mays^em best. 



The result I announce will, I trust, justify, in the President's eyes, the 

 determination I took to let the allowance made to Madame la Batut by 

 the master's report stand, without attempting to overset it, whatever 

 might have been the prospect or assurance of ultimate success. The 

 longer the suit lasted, the greater were the risks to which it was exposed. 

 A large sum of money, the whole mentioned above, was to go out of the 

 kingdom, unless an heir could be found to a wandering young English- 

 man, who had died in Italy at eight or nine and twenty,* and whose 

 mother, never lawfully married, still lives in France. Here was basis 

 enough for the artful and dishonest to fabricate stories of heirship, on alle- 

 gations of this young Englishman having been married. That fact as- 

 sumed, the main stumbling-block to their devices would have disappear- 

 ed. Fabrications to this effect might have been made to wear the sem- 

 blance of truth by offers in the market of perjury of Italy, France, and 

 England — incidents like these being fimiiliar to history, whether we take 

 public annals, or those of families ; and although the combinations, how- 

 ever craftily set on foot, might have been defeated in the end, it is easy 

 to perceive' that time and expense would have been required to defeat 

 them. The possibility of their being formed (never to be regarded as 

 very remote while tlie suit remained open) made it my first anxiety, as it 

 was always my first duty, to have it decided as soon as possible, and to take 

 care even that it moved on during its pendency with no more of publicity 

 to its peculiar circumstances than could be avoided. I trust that both 

 these feelings have been discernible in the general current of my letters 

 to you, reporting all the steps I have taken in it from my first arrival. 



is^eed I add, as a further incentive to despatch, had further been want- 

 ing, that events bearing unfavorably upon the public affairs of this coun- 

 try, above all upon the harmony or stability of its foreign relations, 

 would not have failed to o])erate inauspiciously upon the suit, if in nothing 

 else, by causing stocks to fall. They did begin to fall on the first news 

 of the rebellion in Canada, not recovering until the accounts of its sup- 

 pression arrived. The case is now beyond the reach of accident, whether 



* Believed to be the age of Henry James Hungerford, though not found in the master's report. 



