Present 8th May 1576 Ditto 29th May 1739 ———— 2)3315 ———— 1657½ 270 8th Portuguese regt. ———— 1927 127 Prisoners of war. ———— 2054 750 Spaniards. ———— 2804 Deduct prisoners on the 8th 115 ———— Total 2689 ———— To which are to be added the killed and wounded of the Anglo-Portuguese, and the men rejoined from command. Thus, the statements in my History and in my Justification are both borne out; for the numbers are above two thousand as set down in the first, and nearly three thousand as stated in the last. Moreover, a general historian is not blameable for small inaccuracies. If he has reasonably good authority for any fact he cannot be justly censured for stating that fact, and you should make a distinction between that which is stated in my History and that which is stated in my controversial writings. All mistakes in the latter however trifling are fair; but to cavil at trifles in the former rather hurts yourself. Now with respect to the artillery there is an example of this cavilling, and also an illustration of your lordship’s mode of raising a very confused argument on a very plain fact. I said there were so many guns in the field, and that so many were nine-pounders; you accused me of arbitrarily deciding upon their calibre. In reply I shewed you that I took the _number_ on the report of colonel Dickson, the commanding officer of artillery, the _calibre_ upon the authority of your own witness and quarter-master-general, sir Benjamin D’Urban. The latter was wrong and there the matter should have ended. Your lordship, however, requires me, as a mark of ingenuousness, to acknowledge as my mistake that which is the mistake of sir Benjamin D’Urban, and you give a grand table, with the gross number of pounds of iron as if the affair had been between two ships. You set down in your columns the statements of the writer of a note upon your Strictures, the statement of the Strictures themselves, and my statement; and then come on with your own observations as if there were three witnesses on your side. But the author of the note is again your witness D’Urban, who thus shews himself incorrect both as to number and weight; and the author of the Strictures is yourself. This is not an _ingenuous_, though it is an _ingenious_ mode of multiplying testimony. In your Further Strictures also you first called in sir B. D’Urban in person, you then used his original memoir, you also caused him to write anonymously a running commentary upon yours and his own statements, and now you comment in your own