LETTERS OF A CITIZEN. 61 



future, had more properly been simply " your friend" or " an en- 

 emy to the navyP 



When I cast my eyes cursorily, for the first time, over these 

 "delectable" productions, I could not help feeling deep commis- 

 eration for you, that so long a life of patriotic, liberal, and enlight- 

 ened services to your country — of which, unfortunately, but few 

 records have been preserved — and especially the several years you 

 have occupied — I cannot say filled — the chair of your official pre- 

 decessors, watching with more than paternal solicitude over the 

 naval concerns of the country, infusing into all their branches a 

 due proportion of your own energy and decision, and inspiring the 

 officers by your own illustrious example with a liberal and har- 

 monious spirit of action ; I say, remembering all these things, I 

 could not avoid feeling commiseration that no abler pen had been 

 employed in the doubtful task of rescuing your official character 

 from obloquy. I could not but ask myself, where is the chivalry of 

 the navy, that it does not rally round its great head and pattern 

 in this his hour of need ? 



In looking over, for the second time, what " A Friend to the 

 Navy" had put forth in your defence, I must own I had some mis- 

 givings as to who that " friend" might be. I began strongly to 

 suspect that he was no friend, but an enemy, to you as well as to 

 the navy, who had assumed the mask of friendship for the malig- 

 nant purpose of rendering you ridiculous in the eyes of your coun- 

 trymen by the very puerile, evasive, and disconnected style he 

 had adopted in attempting to sustain you. This impression was 

 further strengthened by the fact, apparent to every reader of l«is 

 articles, that all the charges I have preferred against you were, 

 substantially, admitted ; while the whole scope and tenour of the 

 language used manifested more decided hostility to the expedition 

 than had been openly avowed in any previous communication of 

 your own. I intend to have an extra number of these articles 

 struck off, as, whether prepared by a friend or a foe, they serve 

 to confirm everything I have said in my letters with regard to you* 

 and such were my second impressions ; they did not, however, 

 last long. 



When I began to compare the effusions of " A Friend to the 

 Navy" with the extracts from your official reports, inserted by him 

 in the way of filling up your defence, and noticed their striking 



