4 90 



A VOYAGE TO 



of calling in the civil authority in all cases of delin- 

 quency in disobedience of orders, it would be abso- 

 lutely impossible for us to suffer our boats to leave the 

 ship while in foreign ports. 



Such I believe to be a correct statement of the case. 

 It is a case in which my officers while engaged in 

 compelling one of my men to do his duty, he was 

 forcibly taken from them, and themselves grossly abus- 

 ed; where, instead of securing the man, that his claim 

 to liberation, if he had any, might be properly investi- 

 gated by some civil tribunal, he was taken by a mili- 

 tary guard before military officers, (who could not even 

 be known as such to strangers, by any uniform they 

 wore) and then at once discharged, or rather, as I am 

 informed, taken into the service of his majesty the king 

 of the Brazils, while my officers were treated in a most 

 unbecoming and ungentlemanly manner. 



I consider it my duty, therefore, to demand the man 

 in question, as an x4.merican seaman, regularly enlist- 

 ed and paid as such, on the books of this ship; forci- 

 bly and irregularly taken out of my possession, by the 

 officers of his majesty, the king of the Brazils; unless 

 satisfactory proof can be exhibited, of his being a na- 

 tive subject of his majesty. In which event, you will 

 act as the laws of the country in which you reside, and 

 your sense of what is due to your own country may 

 dictate. After the manifest disposition I have evinc- 

 ed, of my desire to treat with marked respect, every 

 constituted authority of this government, I should not 

 do justice to my own feelings, or to the dignity of the 

 nation I represent, were I not to dwell upon the insult 

 offered to my country, in the abuse of two officers 

 bearing her commission, while in the lawful and regu- 



