be freely bestowed by my most gracious
Sovereign. I beseech your Majesty to condescend to receive the
accompanying review of my case, which, I trust, will prove to your
Majesty that I am not unworthy of that act of your Majesty's favour
which I humbly solicit. It is not because I have undergone a sentence
heavier than the law pronounced, it is not because I have been deprived
for sixteen years of the rank and honours which I acquired in the Royal
Navy, nor is it because I am deserving of any consideration on account
of services to my King and country, that I now presume to appeal to your
Majesty,--though no one is more likely than your Majesty to feel for my
sufferings, and no one more competent to appreciate my services,--but it
is because I had no participation in, and no knowledge, not even the
most indistinct or remote, of the crime under the imputation of which I
have been so variously and so unceasingly punished. It is this alone
which impels me to approach your Majesty, and this alone which enables
me."

Other copies of the "Review" having been sent to the Cabinet Ministers,
with letters urging its favourable consideration, Lord Cochrane, in
nearly every case, received a friendly answer. "I need not say," wrote
Earl Grey on the 12th of December, "that it would give me great
satisfaction if it should be found possible to comply with the prayer of
your petition. This opinion I expressed some years ago in a letter
which, I believe, was communicated to you. To the sentiments expressed
in that letter I refer, which, if I remember right, acquitted you of all
blame, except such as might have been incurred by inadvertence and by
having suffered yourself to be led by others into measures of the
consequences of which you were not sufficiently aware."

More than a year was to be spent, however, in persevering effort before
Lord Cochrane's claim for justice was acceded to. Objection was taken by
some to the form in which his address to the King was worded. It was "a
letter," they said, and not "a petition;" and Lord Cochrane was
distressed at hearing, on the 18th, that the document had been given
back by his Majesty to Lord Melbourne without any comment.

"If I have erred as to the form of my petition, which was in the shape
of a most respectful and dutiful letter to his Majesty, or as to the
channel through which it should have been forwarded," said Lord Cochrane
in a letter to Earl Grey, written on the 23rd of December,