“In a conversation with a gentleman of character and respectability, and I believe hitherto of unquestionable veracity, I was last night, to my great astonishment, informed that you had, about three months ago, stated to my informant, that the reason why a certain affair, in which the name of a most respectable family is involved, to whom I need not more particularly allude, was broken off was, that I had given that family a false statement of my pretensions; that I had, among other things, asserted I had a vote for the University of Dublin, which, in your opinion, I had no more than you had; meaning, I presume, that I had no vote, and that I had stated what was not true, and that you considered that I was, in fact, a mere adventurer. I can scarcely imagine that a person holding the station in society that you do, or that any man who ought, by profession and education, to be a gentleman, could have gone so gratuitously out of his way to traduce the character of any individual behind his back; particularly when that individual was your countryman, to whom to his face you had made professions, if not of friendship, at least, of cordiality and good-will, and whose only previous intercourse with you was consulting you professionally in the first instance, and meeting you afterwards once or twice when you called professionally at the house of his friends. You will therefore, I feel satisfied, see the propriety, from regard to your own character, of coming at once to an explicit understanding upon the subject of this letter, and stating to me whether you did or did not use the expressions attributed to you. If you did not, you cannot, I am sure, as a gentleman, hesitate to disavow them promptly and unequivocally. If, on the other hand, you are prepared to maintain them, you will see the propriety of letting me know so without delay; as I am at present alone in Exeter, and am ordered to embark to-morrow morning on board his Majesty’s ship Britomart, at Plymouth. “I have the honour to be, &c. “J. W. JEFFCOTT.”