HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
m 
honour, gratitude, and duty, to the Company. At length, I thought it necessary to 
explain the powers with which I was invested; and after having employed all the 
means of mild, but urgent persuasions, I found myself obliged to threaten the em¬ 
ployment of force, to such as still continued to thwart the plans which- had been 
formed for the protection and defence of your commerce in India. 
“ Such is my situation, which will prevent me from undertaking any cruize ; as 
the utmost I can perform, will be to go directly for Pondicherry. Nor can I be 
insensible to the expectations which will be formed from my apparent force, and the 
impossibility, from its real state, of being able to> gratify them. Besides, the anxiety 
I have suffered, the labour I have undergone, and the privations I have sustained, 
have greatly injured my health, and I have been a victim to the scurvy. But 
neither the ill state of my health, nor the discouragements which have so long vexed 
and still continue to harass me, shall cause my zeal to slacken in the service of the 
Company, or lessen my sense of the honour which has been conferred upon me, 
by the appointment of the King, to command the naval service in the Indian seas. 
I well know the enemies which this confidence has procured me, and am aware of* 
the animosity which will be exercised against me. I am not ignorant that my ad¬ 
ministration in the islands has been the subject of severe animadversion : but that 
intelligence does not disturb my tranquillity. I am ready to meet my foes, and 
shall present myself to their accusations without fear: and with respect to the fortune 
I possess, I have no cause to blush at the means I employed to attain it. I am ready 
to deliver up my books, examined as they have been by the Council, year after 
year, into the hands of mv enemies, and subject them to their malicious scrutiny. - 
They will find in them an honest detail of my commercial concerns, and the origin 
of my fortune; but they will never be able to discover that the interests of the 
Company have been sacrificed to my own. I depart, therefore, under all the disad¬ 
vantages which surround me, with the ardent hope, that I shall revenge myself of my 
enemies by some signal service to my country, which will impose silence on them; 
and it will not be my fault if that hope is not gratified. 
“ In truth, the crews which you have sent me, are very unfit for 1 the requisite 
service, and it is dire necessity alone that compels me to employ them. All the 
vessels which I command here, except the Achilles, are incapable of carrying, a 
lower tier of guns; and I must content myself with placing twelve pounders on 
their decks. 
