310 LETTERS OF A CITIZEN. 



the great objects of the expedition ; that you had brought before 

 them but a partial view of the subject ; and in my next letters I 

 shall proceed to prove them so. 



Very respectfully, 



Your obedient servant and fellow 



CITIZEN. 



New-York, June 29, 1837. 



II. 



To the Honourable Mahlon Dickerson, Secretary of the Navy, 



SIR, 



You will remember the conclusion of my last number. It was 

 there intimated that your instructions to the naval board did not 

 convey an impartial and just view of the great objects of the ex- 

 pedition. I promised that in my next I would prove my asser- 

 tion, and shall proceed to do so. 



Fortunately for my purpose, there are ample records which 

 bear directly and luminously upon the point at issue. To these 

 documents I shall mainly confine myself; because, being official 

 and on file in the naval department, you can have access to them 

 at any moment, and can therefore the more easily judge of the 

 fairness of the testimony I shall extract from them. No one, sir, 

 can turn over the pages of these documents and fail to be at once 

 convinced, even against his will, that the whole action of Congress 

 has been based upon memorials from various sections of the 

 country, and more especially from that portion occupied by our 

 fellow-citizens interested in the whale-fishery, and the multifarious 

 traffic carried on among the countless islands of the great North 

 and South Pacific and Indian Oceans. 



The memorials to which I refer are now before me. Among 

 them is one from Nantucket as far back as November, 1828. As 

 regards the whale-fishery, the memorialists remark : 



" Whether viewed as a nursery of bold, hardy seamen, or the 

 employment of capital in one of the most productive modes, or as 

 furnishing an article of indispensable necessity to human comfort, 

 it seems to your petitioners to be especially deserving the public 



