52 
MISSION TO ASHAN'TEE. 
Mr. Hutchison went in the evening to the chief captain to request 
a messenger from the King to Cape Coast ; about two hours after- 
wards he reported the King's reply almost literally as follows : 
" The King wishes you good night ; this is his palaver and yours, 
you must not speak it to any one else, the white men come to 
cheat him. The King recollects the face of the white man who 
spoke to him to day, he likes him much, he wishes he would talk 
the palaver; the King hkes the other white men who stood up with 
him very much ; he thinks the Governor of Accra wishes to put 
all the wrong on the Governor at Cape Coast, and not to tell any 
thing. The King thinks that not right, and he sees you do not 
like that. You must not speak this palaver again ; 'tis the King's 
palaver, and yours; the King's captain will speak right to the 
King what you say, and you shall have a messenger." 
We again affirm positively, that Mr, James made no offer to 
communicate w^ith the Governor, but spoke only of his return, 
which we know he was meditating at the expense of the treaty, 
and every object of the Mission. 
Referring to our detail previous to the serious business of to day, 
you will find every circumstance to have been encouraging, and in 
our opinion, auspicious to the consummation of the Mission. Yet 
at that moment, unclouded as it was, we know Mr. James, by his 
own confession, to have written to head quarters with a gloom 
which existed only in his own imagination ; this letter did not go 
from the detention of the Fantee bearers. We believe firmly, that 
had there been no interference on our part at the critical moment, 
Mr. James would have returned forthwith to Cape Coast, without 
effecting one object of the Mission, and that the future good of the 
Settlements would. not only have been sacrificed, but their present 
security endangered.* 
* " The government of the country is a military despotism, and I have this day re- 
