pare to go on board the
Speedy--for you must not be separated from the important testimony we can
find in that ship. As for the citizens you mention, they are bound to
submit to the decision of the admiralty courts, and not to take the law
into their own hands."

"We shall see, my lord. When this case reaches my own country, we shall
probably hear more of it."

I uttered this in a sufficiently magnificent manner; and, to own the
truth, I felt a little magnificently at the time. I was then young, not
three-and-twenty; and I thought of my country, her independence, her
justice, her disposition to do right, her determination to submit to no
wrongs, and her disregard of the expedient when principles were
concerned,--much as young people think of the immaculate qualities of
their own parents. According to the decisions of judges of this latter
class, there would not be a liar, a swindler, a cheat, or a mercenary
scoundrel living; but the earth would be filled with so many suffering
saints that are persecuted for their virtues. According to the notions of
most American citizens of my age, the very name they bore ought to be a
protection to them in any part of the world, under the penalty of
incurring the republic's just indignation. How far my anticipations were
realized, will be seen in the sequel;--and I beg the American reader, in
particular, to restrain his natural impatience, until he can learn the
facts in the regular order of the narrative. I can safely promise him,
that should he receive them in the proper spirit, with a desire to
ascertain truth only and not to uphold bloated and untenable theories, he
will be a wiser, and probably a more modest man, for the instruction that
is to be thus gleaned from the incidents it will be my painful office to
record. As for Lord Harry Dermond, the threatened indignation of the great
American nation gave him very little concern. He probably cared a vast
deal more for one frown from the admiral who commanded at Plymouth, than
for the virtuous resentment of the President and Congress of the United
States of America. I am writing of the close of the year 1803, it will be
remembered;--a remote period in the history of the great republic; though
I will not take it on myself to say things have materially altered, except
it be in the newspapers, in this particular interest. The order to prepare
to quit the Briton was repeated, and I was dismissed to the outer cabin,
where was Marble, wh