134 
MISSION TO ASHANTEE. 
hensions which have recently affected your opinion of the Resi- 
dency, rather than by the plea that the treaty was executed before 
I received them. 
If I had been convinced that it was dislike, and not suspicion, 
which actuated the opposition to the Residency,'! should not only 
have considered it imprudent, but derogatory, to have persevered 
in the view ; but, sensible that it was the latter, (from the evidence 
of the King's deportment, and the knowledge of the intrigue and 
calumny excited against us,) 1 felt the greater anxiety for its 
accomplishment; since, to have yielded to suspicion, without 
every labour to eradicate it, would have been to have excluded 
ourselves from the kingdom hereafter. 
If the King had been actuated, individually, by the desire of 
detecting the frauds of his messengers, I should have viewed the 
measure as pernicious ; but the Government itself having anxiously 
recommended it, for the sake of their own interest, (Fort pay, and 
purchases from the treasury being always divided amongst the 
superior captains) I considered it harmless ; and not solely from 
the power of its advocates, but also from the impotence of the 
royal messengers in state affairs, being generally attendants on the 
King, and therefore jealously watched by the other parts of the 
Government. This desire has onlv been addressed to me in two 
instances, both of which I think justified it: first, respecting the 
fort pay ; it having been since proved, and confessed, that, out of 
62 oz. paid at Christiansburg Castle in 1816 and 17, the Ashantee 
Government has been defrauded of 23 oz. by the messenger: and 
secondly, respecting the goods purchased by Ocranameah, where 
the fraud could not escape notice. Such peculations have proba- 
bly, in the first case, given rise to doubts of our honour ; and in the 
latter, have ceitainly proved a prejudice to the trade. On the 
occasion of Ocranameah's baseness, I myself requested the King to 
