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 services had been engaged on the express stipulation of a right to all captures is, perhaps, unparalleled in the history of nations; and, as both officers and men looked to me for protection, I determined to persevere in demanding from the Government of Maranham—­at least a compromise of the sums which the captors had, in 1823, lent to its pressing exigencies.

No small amount of obloquy has been attached to me with regard to this act of justice, the only one the squadron was ever likely to obtain; but the transaction involved my own good faith with both officers and men, who had lent the money solely on my assurance that the Government at Rio de Janeiro could not do otherwise than refund the amount—­so important was it at the time, that the pressing difficulties of the province should be promptly met.  A man must have a singularly constituted mind, who, in my position, would have acted otherwise.  To this subject it will be necessary to recur.