powers in either Chili or Brazil can possibly be offended with me for giving a guardedly temperate documentary narrative of what must hereafter form the basis of their national annals.  I do not for a moment contemplate that men of enlightened views such as now direct the affairs of both countries have either part or sympathy with self-interested adventurers who in popular revolutions too often rise to the surface, and for a time make confusion worse confounded; till replaced—­as a matter of course, no less than by necessity—­by men of greater grasp of mind and more exalted aspirations.

But this is as it maybe—­my reputation as a British seaman is to me of the highest moment, and it shall not be sullied after my death by the aspersions of those who wilfully revenged the thwarting of their anti-Imperial designs, by imputations which can alone enter into the minds of men devoid of generous impulses and therefore incapable of appreciating higher motives.  I have not followed their example, but where it is necessary to bring forward such persons—­they will be viewed through the medium of their own documents, which are incontestible and irresistible, and which would as easily convict me of untruth as they convict my maligners of practices unworthy the honour of a nation.

To my own countrymen these volumes can scarcely be matter of indifference; though, perhaps, few reflect that the numerous fleets of British merchantmen which now frequent both shores of South America, are the consequence of the deliverance of these vast territories from an exclusive colonial yoke.  It is true that England had previously formed a treaty with Portugal, permitting English vessels to trade to her South American Colonies, but such was the influence of Portuguese merchants with the local governments, that it was nearly inoperative; so that, practically, the Portuguese were in the exclusive possession of that commerce which my expulsion of the fleet and army of the mother country unreservedly threw open to British enterprise.  The same, even in a higher degree, may be said with regard to Chili and Peru.

Yet, scarcely had my mission to Chili become known, than the influence of Spain induced the British Ministry to pass a “Foreign Enlistment Act,” the penal clauses of which were evidently aimed at me, for having entered into the service of unacknowledged governments without permission—­though I had shortly before been most unjustly driven from the service of my native country.

In blind animosity towards me, my former English persecutors failed to perceive the advantage to British commerce, of freeing both sides of South America from lingering war and internal dissension.  An amusing instance of this occurred on my return to England.  Having occasion to wait upon the then Attorney-General relative to a patent which I had in hand, he brusquely inquired “whether I was not afraid to appear before him?” On my replying that “I was not