the prize-money conceded to the captors by
Imperial decree, without which customary incentive neither myself, nor
any other foreign officer or seaman, would have been likely to enter the
service. My _individual claim_, viz. the pay stipulated in the Imperial
patents, was agreed upon without limitation as to time, as is clear from
the expression that I should receive it whether "afloat or ashore,"
"_tanto em terra como no mar_," _i.e._ whether "actively engaged or
not"--whether "in war or peace." I have committed no act whereby this
right could be cancelled, but was fraudulently driven from the Imperial
service, as the shortest way of getting rid of me and my claims
together. These are no assertions of mine, but are the _only possible
deductions_ from documents which have one meaning, and that
incontestible.

I claim, moreover, the estate awarded to me by His Imperial Majesty,
with the double purpose of conferring a mark of national approbation of
my services, and of supporting the high dignities to which--with the
full concurrence of the Brazilian people and legislature--I was raised
as a reward for those services, the magnitude and importance of which
were on all hands admitted. To have withheld that estate, after the
reasons assigned by His Imperial Majesty for conferring it, was a
national error which Brazil should not have committed, and which it
should, even now, be careful to efface; for by approving the dignities
conferred, and withholding the means of supporting them, it has
pronounced its highest honours to be worthless, empty sounding titles,
lightly esteemed by the givers, and of no value to the recipient. Had
this estate cost anything to the Brazilian nation, a miserable economy
might have been pleaded as a reason for withholding it; but even this
excuse is wanting. Any territorial grant to myself could only have been
an imperceptible fraction of the vast regions, which, together with an
annual revenue of many millions of dollars--my own exertions, _without
cost to the Empire_, had added to its dominions "_unexpectedly_" as the
Commission appointed to investigate my claim felt bound to admit. If
Brazil value its national honour, that blot upon it should not be
suffered to remain.

With regard to the sum owing to me by Chili, for which, in the event of
its non-payment, both His Imperial Majesty Don Pedro I. and his Minister
Jose Bonifacio de Andrada made the Brazilian nation responsible. The
discussion in t