amount of the salaries you
are engaged to pay to myself and the officers whom I brought with
me does not exceed 25,000 dollars a year. To speak of this as an
"enormous responsibility" as an empire, requires more than a "moment's
reflection" to be clearly understood. The Government did, however,
engage to pay to myself and my brother officers and seamen the value
of our captures from the enemy, pursuant to the practice of all
maritime belligerents, but this engagement has not hitherto been
fulfilled. If, however, your excellency admits the responsibility of
the Government to fulfil this engagement also, I am still equally at
a loss to conceive in what sense that responsibility can be considered
enormous, inasmuch as these prizes were not the property of the state,
nor of individuals belonging to this nation, but were the property of
Portugal, with whom this nation was and is engaged in lawful war.
The payment, therefore, of the value of these prizes to the captors,
supposing even the full value to be paid, does not in effect take
one penny out of the national treasury, or out of the pocket of any
Brazilian. If it be false--and your excellency appears to scout the
idea--that any danger exists of having to pay twice for these prizes;
if there really is no danger of being compelled to purchase peace
with a defeated enemy by restoring them their forfeited property--it
follows that the responsibility of the Government in fulfilling its
engagement with the captors is so far from being enormous, that it is
literally nothing. How the fulfilment of a lawful engagement by the
simple act of paying over to the squadron the value of its prizes
taken in time of war from the foreign enemies of the state (such
payment occasioning no expense, and no loss to the state itself) can
be attended with an enormous responsibility, I am utterly unable to
comprehend. So far as the engagements of the Government with me,
or with the captors in general of the Portuguese prizes, are of
a pecuniary nature, they appear to me to lay no great weight of
responsibility on the herculean shoulders of this vast empire. And it
is only in a pecuniary sense that I can conceive it to be possible for
your excellency to have thought of complaining of the responsibility
attending the fulfilment of the engagements of the Government with me.

It is no less difficult to comprehend how this supposed enormous
responsibility has been incurred, "simplement et uniquement po