Having been examined in chief on the seventeenth day of the Arbitration, I remained in the room a few minutes after the Arbitrator had left it. The Rev. R. Sheepshanks, the only other person then present, addressing me said, “it was necessary to _discredit me_ because I had supported Sir J. South.” He added that “he would, at a future time, _attack me_ publicly on _another subject_, on account of the part I had taken in this matter.” The remembrance of his former threats more than four years before at the Visitation at the Admiralty, added to the knowledge of the unremitting perseverance with which he had carried on his hostility to Sir J. South, satisfied me that it would be unsafe for the cause of truth, and possibly injurious to myself, if I were not to take measures for making known the nature of the weapons which the Rev. R. Sheepshanks was employing. As he had ventured, _after_ my having given evidence on oath, to threaten me with injury, with the hope of inducing me to modify that evidence on cross-examination, it appeared to me probable that he might have been tampering with the evidence of other witnesses in the same cause, who from their position or circumstances in life, might be compelled by the fear of his vengeance to shape their evidence so as to adapt it to his views. The Rev. R. Sheepshanks discovered on reflection no impropriety in this course of intimidating witnesses, or of attacking those who could not be induced to take up his own private quarrels. He thus defended both. “_I think it allowable to throw down the gauntlet in this manner._” “_I have another ground of dispute with Captain Beaufort, and certainly intend to put him down._” The gallant Admiral has survived many a dangerous day, and needs not the pen of a friend to protect his honest and well-earned fame. The reader may perhaps be astonished at the statement made in the preceding pages, and feel disposed to consider it an _ex parte_ statement. It _is entirely_ an _ex parte_ statement: it is not necessary for its support that the reader should give credence even to that small part of it which appears to rest on my own evidence before the Arbitrator. _The whole of it is founded entirely on the testimony of the_ Rev. R. Sheepshanks _himself._ Every statement of those which are marked as quotations was either elicited from him on his cross-examination, or in the few instances in which it came from myself, its correctness was confirmed by his subsequent admission or re-statement. After my statement, and the Rev. R. Sheepshanks’ reply to it, the Arbitrator addressing him said— “With respect to the matter of fact, you agree?” Rev. R. Sheepshanks. “Yes, we agree as to the matter of fact.”