454 LETTERS OF A CITIZEN. 



was not yours ; at any rate, it was temporary capital in hand, easily 

 to be used for good. No one supposed you would prostitute the 

 dignity of your station by indecently carrying out the imbecile, 

 vindictive, and prescriptive measures of Secretary Dickerson. 

 Your own honour, it was thought, would prevent you from inflict- 

 ing an incurable wound upon the honour and feelings of the ser- 

 vice, by selecting for the command any officer over the heads of 

 his seniors and superiors in professional experience and every es- 

 sential requisite for the conduct of such an undertaking ; men who 

 would have been proud of such a position, but who would not 

 have purchased the distinction at a price so revolting. 



Stand forth, sir, from the mist which has been so dexterously 

 thrown round your official acts in reference to your connexion with 

 the South Sea Expedition. As a high functionary of the govern- 

 ment and a man of honour, you can have no objection to being 

 summoned before the public, nor can you demur to the public judg- 

 ment being invoked upon your official deeds. If your countrymen 

 shall become acquainted with many things which you had hoped 

 to keep concealed from them, and your actions shall be found to 

 have been unworthy the station you fill and the character you 

 brought into it, the fault is yours, not mine ; and you may learn 

 from it the force of the conclusion arrived at by the man in the 

 play, that honesty was the best policy, for he had tried both. 



I may not be able, sir, to define clearly the exact part you per- 

 formed in the early stages of your agency in the business of the 

 expedition. You dabbled in that matter long before the public 

 were apprized that the Hon. Mahlon Dickerson had in you a secret 

 coadjutor, while he was earning for himself that distinction which 

 the common sense of the nation has since, with such perfect una- 

 nimity, awarded him. In all doubtful cases, I shall not trouble my- 

 self to inquire how much of this was yours or how much of that 

 was his. There has been throughout, as I shall show before I have 

 done with you, such a oneness in the spirit and manner of your ac- 

 tions, that, like Eng and Chang, you must be content to jog along 

 united for the remainder of your days, adjusting the honours be- 

 tween you. 



I might ask which of you concocted, in June, 1837, the plan of ap- 

 pointing five captains, including the navy commissioners, all known 

 enemies of the expedition, to decide on the expediency of with- 



