by reason and argument must be gradual,) I am accused, in a secret dispatch to my superiors in England, of having failed in my mission, from a forbearance, which, though subsequently termed unreasonable and unwise, I have shown Sir George Barlow deemed, or professed to deem, at the moment of my departure from Madras, wise and politic; and from an attention to the feelings of those very officers, to whose feelings and reason, when their crimes were at the greatest height, I had been directed, by the verbal instructions of Sir George Barlow, _and the letters_ of his secretary, to address myself. It is stated, that my time was occupied in communication with disorderly committees. To this I reply, that I never recognised any committee in any public or official manner that could either compromise my own authority, or commit the dignity of Government. I communicated, it is true, chiefly with those officers who, from their rank or ability, appeared to have most influence over the rest. Not to have done so, would have been to neglect the employment of those means to which I have shown Sir George Barlow exclusively trusted for my success. I learnt, that there existed a garrison committee, of which every officer was a member, and which could never meet without danger of a mutiny that in its consequences would have precipitated a rupture between the Government and most other parts of the army: an extreme which it was my constant labour to retard, if I could not altogether avert. This committee I endeavoured, by my influence with the senior and more reflecting officers of the garrison, to dissolve; and I considered my success in this point as a great step towards the restoration of order. The control of the proceedings of the whole became vested in a few senior officers of comparative moderation, whose minds were more accessible to reason, and whose small numbers rendered them less liable to those violent impressions which produce such mischief in large and turbulent meetings. But all the communications I ever had, either directly or indirectly, with any individual or bodies of officers at Masulipatam, are stated in my journal: and, it will be seen from that, I never made the slightest concession to the repeated demands of the officers of that garrison. That my proceedings were not such as is prescribed by an observation of the regular course of military discipline there can be no doubt: but Government had itself decided that question. They had refrained (for the reasons stated in the dispatch to which I have so often referred) from resorting to the usual means, the employment of force for quelling the mutiny at Masulipatam. I was deputed on what is termed in this very dispatch _a mission_, (a word in itself including a volume,) in order that I might reclaim to duty, by the efforts of reason and argument, the officers of a garrison which were known to be almost to a man unanimously bent on mutiny and opposition to authority; and yet I am