SMITHSONIAN BEQUEST. 53 



Having no special instructions as to what 1 am to do with it, my 

 present 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 fulfillment of the trust with which 

 I am charged. But I will reflect further upon the mode of bringing it 

 home, and adopt that which, under all circumstances, may seem best. 



The result I announce will, 1 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 

 Englishman, who had died in Italy at eight or nine and twenty,^ and 

 whose mother, never lawfully married, still lives in France. Here 

 was l)asis enough for the artful and dishonest to fabricate stories of 

 heirship on allegations of this j^oung Englishman having been married. 

 That fact assumed, the main stumbling-block to their devices would 

 have disappeared. Fabrications to this effect might have been made 

 to wear the semblance of truth by offers in the market of perjury of 

 Italy, France, and England — incidents like these being familiar to his- 

 tory, whether we take public annals or those of families; and although 

 the combinations, however 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 the suit remained 

 open) made it mj^ 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 circum- 

 stances 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. 



Need I add, as a further incentive to dispatch, had further been 

 wanting, that events bearing unfavorably upon the public affairs of 

 this country, above all upon the harmony or stability of its foreign 

 relations, would not have failed to operate 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 suppression arrived. The case is now be3^ond the 

 reach of accident, whether from political causes or others inherent 

 in its nature; and that its final decision thus early has been brought 

 about by the course adopted in February, I am no longer permitted to 

 doubt. Early ma}' at first seem a word little applicable, after one 

 entire year and the best part of a second have been devoted to getting 



' Believed to be the age of Henry James llungerfonl, though not found in the 

 master's report. 



