“Your publication of Thursday imposes it upon His Excellency the Governor, as a duty to himself, to Captain Hope, and to the British nation, and in common justice to Commodore Decatur, who is not present to defend himself from the aspersions that you have cast upon him, not to admit of such a document standing uncontradicted in a paper published under the immediate authority of His Majesty’s government. His Excellency is thoroughly aware of the great importance of preserving to the utmost extent perfect freedom of discussion and the fullest liberty of the press in every part of the British dominions. Undoubtedly, therefore, nothing could be further from his intentions than the most distant desire to compel a British editor to retract a statement founded on truth; but when a statement is founded on falsehood, His Excellency conceives it to be incumbent on him equally, in duty to the British public and in support of the true character of the British press, to demand that that falsehood, whether directed against friend or foe, should be instantly retracted, or that the paper which thinks fit to disgrace its columns by persevering in error should no longer be distinguished by royal protection.” Some weeks later, in an issue of March 2d, the following extract attracts attention in a Bermuda journal: “On Wednesday evening last Mr. Randolph, of the United States Navy, late of the _President_ frigate, in company with some other officers of the ship, attacked the editor of the _Royal Gazette_ in a most violent and unprovoked manner with a stick, while he was walking unarmed. The timely arrival of some British officers prevented his proceeding to further acts of violence, and, the guard shortly after coming up, the officer decamped, and the next morning, we understand, he was hoisted into a boat at the crane from the Market Wharf and absconded. An honorable way, truly, for an officer to quit a place where he had been treated with civility and politeness.” However, it will not do to leave the subject without quoting from a letter which the Mr. Randolph referred to wrote over his own signature and sent to the editors of the _Commercial Advertiser_, after his return to New York, in which he observes, after reference to the Bermuda _Royal Gazette_, the affair of the stick, and the “acts of violence,” as follows: “As soon as I read the scurrilous remarks in the _Royal Gazette_ of the fifteenth ult., in relation to the capture of the late U. S. frigate _President_, I walked to the King’s Square with the determination to chastise the editor. I soon fell in with him, and executed my purpose in the most ample and satisfactory manner. There was no American officer in the company except Midshipman Emmett, and Mr. Ward, the editor, was accompanied by Lieutenant Sammon, of the Royal Navy, but by neither of these officers was I interrupted or assisted in the operation.