have I any investment; nor is there one shilling secretly deposited by me in the hands of any human being. Equally ungenerous, and equally untrue it is, to charge me with having lent to loose and disorderly persons large sums which never have, and never will be repaid. I lent no sums but to a very trifling amount, and those were advanced to valued friends. I can, therefore, at this solemn moment declare, most fervently, that I never had any advantage beyond that in which all my partners participated in any of the transactions which are now questioned. They indeed have considered themselves as partners only in the profits, and I am to be burdened with the whole of the opprobrium, that others may consider them as the victims of my extravagance I make this statement not with a view to criminate others, or to exculpate myself; but borne down as I am by calamity, I will not consent to be held out to the world as a cold-blooded and abandoned profligate, ruining all around me for the selfish gratification of vice and sensuality, and involving even my confiding partners in the general destruction. Gentlemen, I have frailties and errors enough to account for. I have sufferings enough, past, present, and in prospect; and if my life were all that was required of me, I might endure in silence; though I will not endure the odium on my memory, of having sinned to pamper delinquencies to which I never was addicted. Thus much has been extorted from me by the fabrications which have been cruelly spread amongst the public,--that very public from whom the arbiters of my fate were to be selected. Perhaps, however, I ought to thank the enemy who besieged the prisoner with his slanders, that he did so whilst my life was spared to refute them, and that he waited not until the grave, to which he would hurry me, had closed at once on my answer and my forgiveness. There is one subject more connected with these charges to which I am compelled to advert, and I do so with great reluctance. It has added to the other charges made against me, lest the world should think there was any vice in which I was not an adept. I have been accused of acting treacherously towards the female who now bears my name, having refused to make reparation until threatened by her brother, and of having deserted her at a moment when she had the greatest claim on my protection. Delicacy forbids me entering into an explanation on this subject further than to declare, that the conduct I adopted on that occasion was uninfluenced by the interference of any individual, and arose, as I then considered, and do still consider, from a laudable and honourable feeling on my part; and the lady's brother, so far from coming forward at the time alluded to, was on service in the West Indies. Could all the circumstances be exposed, I feel convinced that every liberal-minded man would applaud my determination; and I feel satisfaction in saying, that the lady in