f dilatory payments, which could only be
obtained at all from the Junta by fees to those whose duty it was to
pass the accounts! To counteract this, I requested the interim President
to forbid any further purchases on the part of the provincial
Government, as, in future, I would make them myself, and, what was more
to the purpose, pay for them.

By limiting the demand of repayment to one-fourth only of the amount
captured from the Portuguese Government, I was not pressing at all
severely upon the resources of the province, which is one of the richest
in Brazil; nor should I have put them to any inconvenience had I
demanded repayment of the whole, _as I justly might have done_.

On the 8th of February, the Junta of Fazenda sent me a verbal
communication to the effect that they would give the sum agreed upon in
commutation of prize money due to the captors--_in five bills, payable
in five months_. As I knew that, in case of my departure, these would
not be worth the paper upon which they were written, I refused the
offer, adding that, after the course pursued by the prize tribunal at
Rio de Janeiro the seamen had no faith in promises.

Finding that the Junta shewed every disposition to evade the demand, I
requested a personal interview with that body, intimating that I
expected all the members to be present. At this interview, I told the
Junta that all the documents necessary in support of the claim had been
laid before them, these being too precise to admit of dispute--that they
had no right in law, justice, or precedent, to withhold the portion of
the prize property left at Maranham, by the request of the provisional
government, no funds of their own being then available to meet the
exigencies which had arisen--and therefore they were in honour bound to
restore it.

I was induced to adopt this step, not only on account of the evasive
conduct experienced at the hands of the administration at Rio de
Janeiro, but because I knew that negotiations were actually pending for
the restitution of all the Portuguese property captured, as a basis of
the projected peace between Portugal and Brazil; in other words, that
the squadron--whose exertions had added to the Empire a territory larger
than the whole empire as it existed previous to the complete expulsion
of the Portuguese--was to be altogether sacrificed to a settlement
which its own termination of the war had brought about. So barefaced a
proceeding towards those whose se