TERRA AUSTRALIS. 
373 
Port Louis .] 
then. Sir, I shall admit, that to make any remarks upon a port which might 
enable either myself or others to come into it again with more facility, or 
which might give information concerning the refreshments and articles of 
commerce to be procured at it, is, although made in time of peace, a crime; 
and consequently, that if La Perouse executed his instructions, he was no 
better than a spy at the different ports where he put in. Let this. Sir, for the 
moment be admitted; and I ask what proofs you have that I have made such 
remarks ? You will probably say, I intended to make them. True, but 
intention is not action. I might have altered my intentions on coming into 
the port, and finding our two nations to be at war : you cannot know what 
alteration a knowledge of the war might have made in my sentiments. 
We do indeed judge much of the merit or demerit of an action by the inten- 
tion with which it is performed ; but in all cases there must be an action 
performed to constitute any certain merit or demerit amongst men. Now in 
my case, there appears to have been intention only; and even this intention 
I have before shown to be consistent with the practice of your own nation, 
and I believe of all nations. 
As it appears that Your Excellency had formed a determination to stop 
the Cumberland, previously even to seeing me, if a specious pretext were 
wanting for it, it would have been more like wisdom to have let me alone 
until the eve of sailing, and then to have seized my journal; where it is 
possible something better than intention might have been fixed upon as a 
cause for making me a prisoner. This would have been a mean action, and 
altogether unworthy of you or your nation; but it might have answered your 
purpose better than the step now taken. I say there appears to have been a previous 
determination to stop the Cumberland, and from this cause; that on the first 
evening of my arrival, and before any examination was made into my papers 
(my commission and passport excepted), you told me impetuously that I was 
imposing upon you. Now I cannot think that an officer of your rank and 
judgment could act either so ungentlemanlike, or so unguardedly, as to make 
such a declaration without proof; unless his reason had been blinded by 
passion, or a previous determination that it should be so, nolens volens. In 
your order of the 21st last it is indeed said, that the captain-general has 
acquired conviction that I am the person 1 pretend to be, and the same for 
whom a passport was obtained by the English government from the First 
1803. 
December. 
Sunday S5, 
