ur faire
plaisir" to me; and it is still more difficult to comprehend how it
happens that your excellency, "after all that you have heard and seen"
(apres ce que j'ai entendu et vu), should be at a loss to know in what
manner I am to be contented (je ne saurais pas dequelle maniere on
puisse vous contenter). If, indeed, your excellency imagines that I
ought to be contented with honorary distinctions alone, however highly
I may prize them as the free gift of his Imperial Majesty; if
your excellency is of opinion that I ought with "remercimens et
satisfaction" to put up with those honours in lieu of those stipulated
substantial rewards, which even those very honours render more
necessary; if your excellency thinks that I ought, like the dog in the
fable, to resign the substance for a grasp at the shadow; if this is
all that your excellency knows on the subject of giving me content, it
is then very true that your excellency does not know in what manner it
is to be done. But if, "after all that your excellency has heard and
seen," you would be pleased to render yourself conversant with those
written engagements under which I was induced to enter into the
service, all that your excellency and the rest of the ministers and
council of his Imperial Majesty would then have to do in order
to content me to the full, would be to desist from evading the
performance of those engagements, and to cause them at once to
be fully and honourably fulfilled. And I do believe that my
"Correspondance Officielle une fais rendue publique, en faira foi;"
for I am not conscious that I have ever called on the Government to
incur one farthing of expense on my account beyond the fulfilment of
their written engagements, which were the same as those which I had
with Chili, which were formed precisely on the practice of England.
There was, indeed, a verbal and conditional engagement with the late
ministers that certain losses which I might incur in consequence of
leaving the service of Chili should be made good;[A] and the question
as to the obligation of fulfilling that engagement I submitted (in
my letter of the 6th of March to the Minister of Marine) to the
consideration of their successors. It will be fortunate for me if this
should prove to be one of those "ill-understood verbal transactions"
which your excellency assures me the present ministers and council
always decide in my favour. I shall not in that case be backward to
receive the benefit of