g specific charges against the interim President:--

Maranham, 10th March, 1825.

SIR,

I have received your Excellency's letter, in which the interim
President, Manuel Pellas da Silva Lobo, is charged with an intention
of departing from Maranham in a sudden and clandestine manner, and
in which your Excellency calls on me to adopt measures for the
prevention of his flight. I must, however, represent to your
Excellency that, since I have been in this province, so many reports
have been made to me with the greatest confidence, impeaching the
character and motives of individuals--all of which have proved
unfounded--that I feel it impossible to act with any propriety on
your Excellency's intimation--without being furnished with proof of
the truth of the allegation.

Your Excellency, I am persuaded, is too honourable to propagate so
serious a charge without believing it to be well founded, and I
cannot doubt that you will have the candour to admit that I am
entitled to be made acquainted with the grounds on which your
Excellency's belief rests, before proceeding to any measure of
severity against the party accused.

I have further to request that your Excellency will be pleased to
say _for what crime, or crimes_, the President interino is supposed
to be about to abandon--not only this province--but to flee from his
native country?

(Signed) COCHRANE AND MARANHAO.

To PEDRO JOSE DE COSTA BARROS.

The charges against Lobo, I well knew to have been fabricated for the
purpose of getting me to place him in arrest, and instal Barros in the
presidency. This plot failing, I learned, on the following day, that
arrangements had been made for the forcible seizure of the interim
President's person without any specific cause for dissatisfaction with
his government, which was in all respects just and excellent. Finding
the spirit of intrigue thus again manifested for the neutralisation of
all my efforts to restore order and prosperity to the province--to the
discomfiture of the intriguants--I again, on the 11th of March, declared
martial law. Such was the terror inspired by this act in the minds of
those who had fomented renewed disorder, that, anticipating summary
retribution from me, they prepared for the flight of which they had
accused an innocent man. On learning this, I despatched a vessel with a
competent officer to cruise