Is it possible that any disavowal could be more distinct, or made in a more proper and military manner? Yet I am directly charged with _having abstained_ from making any such communication to the _men_! It is possible a charge so completely unfounded may have originated in mistake or neglect: but where there exists, as on the present occasion, an evident desire to criminate; where the secret nature of the blow afforded no opportunity of defence; such mistake, even if proved, neither can nor ought to disarm honest resentment. It is too much to have a character, that has been obtained by the struggle of a whole life, assailed in such a manner. But the knowledge which the Governor of Fort St. George had of my proceeding, upon this point, was not limited to this communication through Lieutenant-Colonel Barclay. The day after my return to Madras, I read to him the whole of my Journal. It is true he did not pay much attention to it: and the little value he attached to the detail of my proceedings was the cause of my not loading my public report with a copy of its contents. I had neither received at that moment, nor at any subsequent period, the slightest official notice of even dissatisfaction; and the probability of my conduct being misrepresented to my superiors in England in the manner it has been, never once entered into my imagination. In answer to the charge, "That I did not employ my strenuous exertions to recall the men to a sense of their duty, by impressing upon their minds the degree of guilt and danger in which their officers, for purposes entirely personal to themselves, had endeavoured to involve them," I must reply in the most solemn manner, that I was not withheld from acting in the manner the Government here state they expected I would, merely because I had no orders to do so, but because I considered that such a proceeding would have had an operation directly opposite to all Sir George Barlow's intentions, as expressed when I left Madras. His desire then was, (as has already been shown,) to conciliate and reclaim the officers of the Company's army, not to render them desperate. I was particularly instructed to point their views to England, to persuade them by every effort to await the decision of the Honourable the Court of Directors, and to prevent their precipitating themselves into a guilt from which they could never retreat. Sir George Barlow appeared satisfied I could effect this through the influence of my general character, and the power of reason, aided by the justice of the cause I had to support: and I most solemnly affirm, that if the Government of Madras desire to insinuate (as the substance of these passages in their letter would imply) that I acted contrary to the instructions of Sir George Barlow, communicated to me in private, that the charge is not founded in fact: and it is fortunate for me that the subsequent communications made by Sir George Barlow's Secretary, and all the circumstances of this case, completely