30 LETTERS OF A CITIZEN. 



agency in these delays was chargeable on you. Thus you tell 

 him, that inasmuch as " it was his earnest wish that the intentions 

 of Congress in authorizing the measure should be carried into 

 effect with the least possible delay ^"^ you had not only resolved to 

 clothe Commodore Jones with unusual powers, and to grant him 

 " every facility" for the purpose of shipping crews, but that you 

 had yourself " determined to make an extraordinary effort to 

 accomplish that object^ The fruits of your extra labours have 

 been seen by the whole nation in the humiliating spectacle of 

 what, by " extraordinary efforts," you have been able to accom- 

 plish in fourteen months, with the most ample means at your dis- 

 posal, towards expediting the preparations for the voyage. 



But your countrymen do not know what the " every facility" 

 so confidently set forth in your report has been. I will tell them, 

 and then leave them to judge whether the negative or positive 

 quality predominates. You granted to Commodore Jones the ex- 

 traordinary ^''facility'''' of shipping mariners at the regular stations 

 opened for the general service ; precisely what you allowed to 

 others under special orders, while recruiting for the crews of vessels 

 destined for the Pacific and Brazilian stations, and nothing more. 

 Men at this time were commanding from $16 to $18 per month 

 in the merchant service, and in the navy from $10 to $12 per 

 month ! It has been the policy of other countries to assign sea- 

 men sent on such adventures extra pay in money or clothing, of- 

 ten in both ; while you have allowed neither, though requested to 

 do so. Congress, at the last session, made a special grant for the 

 increase of seamen's wages, every particle of which you have 

 withheld from the sailors being shipped for the expedition. 



You vouchsafed Commodore Jones the " facility" of detailing 

 officers to visit New-London, New-Bedford, and the other places 

 where it was supposed crews might be procured ; but you took 

 care to withhold from those officers money for advances^ without 

 which, it is notorious, men cannot be induced to ship, either in the 

 merchant or naval service. I have it from the lips of an officer 

 who visited New-London, that some fifteen or twenty prime 

 hands, who were ready and anxious to engage, called on him at 

 once; but not iindirig it convenient to make their own advances 

 and pay their own passage to a naval rendezvous, and the officer 

 being unprovided with funds for this purpose, he did not, as a 



