f and of those other officers who, by the most
zealous exertions, had proved our devotion to the best interests
of your Imperial Majesty and your Brazilian people. None but such
ministers would have endeavoured by insults and acts of the grossest
injustice, to drive us from the service of your Imperial Majesty and
to place Portuguese officers in our stead. And, above all, none but
such ministers could have suggested to your Imperial Majesty that
extraordinary proceeding which was projected to take place on the
night of the 3rd of June, 1824, a proceeding which, had it not been
averted by a timely discovery and prompt interposition on my part,
would have tarnished for ever the glory of your Imperial Majesty, and
which, if it had failed to prove fatal to myself and officers, must
inevitably have driven us from your imperial service. When placed
in competition with this plot of these ministers and the false
insinuations by which they induced your Imperial Majesty to listen to
their insidious counsel, all their previous intrigues, and those of
the whole Portuguese faction, to ruin the naval power of Brazil, sink
into insignificance. But for the advancement of Portuguese interests
there was nothing too treacherous or malignant for such ministers and
such men as these to insinuate to your Imperial Majesty, especially
when they had discovered that it was not possible by their unjust
conduct to provoke me to abandon the service of Brazil so long as my
exertions could be useful to secure its independence, which I believed
to be alike the object of your Imperial Majesty and the interest of
the Brazilian people.

"If the counsels of such persons should prove fatal to the interests
of your Imperial Majesty, no one will regret the event more sincerely
than myself. My only consolation will be the knowledge that your
Imperial Majesty cannot but be conscious that I, individually, have
discharged my duty, both in a military and in a private capacity,
towards your Majesty, whose true interest, I may venture to add, I
have held in greater regard than my own; for, had I connived at the
views of the Portuguese faction, even without dereliction of my duty
as an officer, I might have shared amply in the honours and emoluments
which such influence has enabled these persons to obtain, instead of
being deprived, by their means, of even the ordinary rewards of my
labours in the cause of independence which your Imperial Majesty had
engaged me to