364 LETTERS OF A CITIZEN. 



recent course has abundantly proved. You acknowledge that the 

 commander, inasmuch as he was to be held in a high .degree re- 

 sponsible for the success of the expedition, ought to be consulted 

 on the force to be employed, and afterward to exclude him from 

 a board instructed to decide on this very point. Do you imagine, 

 sir, this shallow device was not fully understood ; or do you sup- 

 pose there is a man of intelligence in the country, who has paid 

 the slightest attention to the subject, who believes that an honest 

 solicitude for the success of the enterprise was your motive for 

 convening this board, under the instructions it received ? Did 

 you not expect, sir, that it would report as a packed jury would 

 decide ; and have you not been greviously disappointed by the re- 

 cent decision against you ? Can you deny it ? Yes, you may, 

 probably will do so ; but you cannot conceal, even while making 

 the denial, the keen and bitter disappointment rankling within that 

 this, your great last move, has been defeated, leaving you once 

 more naked, alone, and unsupported in your plans to destroy 

 the efficiency of the expedition ; or at least proving that, if you 

 had supporters, they did not choose to compromise themselves by 

 publicly agreeing with you, under circumstances so well calcu- 

 lated to call in question their patriotism and sense of public duty. 

 Thus discomfited, worsted, and overruled in all your machina- 

 tions ; required by the present as well as by the late executive to 

 go on and do your duty, and that speedily, you have at last, with 

 something like an " extraordinary effort," put the preparations in 

 a state of progress. The falling off in the revenue, with the im- 

 mense and ruinous amount of specie which the squadron will re- 

 quire, are points from which you still entertain some lingering 

 hopes. I will examine the piteous wailings of " A Friend to the 

 Navy," and pledge myself to show that he is as uninformed upon 

 the latter subject as you have chosen to remain of the true pur- 

 poses of the expedition. For what end is a heavy amount of spe- 

 cie needed by the squadron ? If it touch at Lima or Valparaiso, 

 we have naval stores and a navy agent at both those places ; and 

 there bills on the United States command a premium. In the 

 purchase of refreshments at most of the islands specie is unne- 

 cessary, inasmuch as all the provisions furnished by the natives 

 are to be procured in exchange for our domestic manufactures 

 (implements of industry, &c.), which will leave the money at 



