You say, between you and myself, there never has been a personal difference, "and you disclaim all personal enmity towards me." If every step you have taken--every word you have uttered, and every line you have written, in relation to me--if your own admission of the very frequent and free conversations you have had respecting me, and my conduct, "since the affair of the Chesapeake," bear not the plainest stamp of _personal hostility_, I know not the meaning of such terms; were you not under the influence of feelings of this sort, why not, in your official capacity, call me, or have me brought, before a proper tribunal, to answer the charges you have preferred against me, and thereby giving me a chance of defending myself? Why speak injuriously of me to _junior_ officers, "which you do not deny?" Why the "many frequent and free conversations respecting me and my conduct," which you have taken so much pains to underscore? Why use the insulting expression, that you "entertained, and still do entertain, the opinion that my conduct, as an officer, since that 'affair' has been such as ought forever to bar my readmission into the service," and that, in endeavoring to prevent it, "you conceive you were performing a duty you owe to the service, and were contributing to its respectability?" Why the _threat_, that if I continued the "efforts" _you_ say I have been making, to be "re-employed" you "certainly should be constrained to continue the expression of those opinions?" Does not all this, together with the whole tenor and tendency of your letter, manifest the most marked _personal_ animosity against me, which an honorable man, acting under a sense of public duty by which you profess to "have been hitherto actuated," would disdain even to shew, much more to feel?