“SIR: I have just received the honour of your letter, with the extract enclosed by desire of His Excellency. I have again to offer to His Excellency my more than gratitude, the feelings of the strongest attachment and respect for this new instance of considerate condescension. To you also, sir, believe me, I am most affectionately grateful for the part that you have been so kind as [to] take upon this unhappy occasion; few would, I am well aware, perhaps few could, have known how to act in the same manner. “As to the communication of the extract, and the motive for doing so, I cannot answer them in the cold parade of official acknowledgment; I feel on the subject the warm and animated thanks of man to man, and these I presume to request that Lord Hardwicke and Mr. Wickham may be pleased to accept: it is, however, only justice to myself to say, that even on the first falling of this unexpected blow, I had resolved (and so mentioned to Mr. Attorney-General), that if I found no actual guilt upon her, I would act with as much moderation as possible towards a poor creature that had once held the warmest place in my heart. I did, even then, recollect that there was a point to which nothing but actual turpitude or the actual death of her parent ought to make a child an orphan; but even had I thought otherwise, I feel that this extract would have produced the effect it was intended to have, and that I should think so now. I feel how I should shrink from the idea of letting her sink so low as to become the subject of the testamentary order of a miscreant who could labour, by so foul means and under such odious circumstances, to connect her with his infamy, and to acquire any posthumous interest in her person or her fate. Blotted, therefore, as she may irretrievably be from my society, or the place she once held in my affection, she must not go adrift. So far, at least, ‘these protectors will not fall off.’ “I should therefore, sir, wish for the suppression of this extract, if no particular, motive should have arisen for forwarding it to its destination. I shall avail myself of your kind permission to wait upon you in the course of the day, to pay my respects once more personally to you, if I shall be so fortunate as to find you at leisure. I have the honour to be, with very great respect, your obliged servant, JOHN P. CURRAN.”