The following were the principal sums disbursed on this occasion, as appears from my private memoranda, the vouchers themselves being afterwards transmitted to the Minister of Marine through Captain Shepherd, as will subsequently appear:—
Dollars. To Myself 85,000 Paid Messrs. May and Lukin, Prize Agents, for Admiralty Court expenses, and commission, at 5 per cent 15,000
Advanced to Squadron generally 23,000
Ditto to Captain Crosbie 5,000
Ditto, to other Officers 3,750
Disbursed at Rio, 70,750
This sum, about £.14,000, may appear trivial to the English reader, accustomed to lavish expenditure in all naval expeditions as the most economical way of securing their future efficiency—and hence the mention of such an amount may be deemed superfluous. That this is not the case will presently appear.
The reader must not however imagine that I am about to inflict on him an account current of the expenditure of the squadron; but circumstances compel me to a precision in this respect on personal grounds: the Brazilian Government—though in possession of the documents and vouchers afterwards transmitted by Captain Shepherd—publicly persisting in the statement that I never furnished accounts of the expedition to Pernambuco and Maranham—thus leaving the public to infer that the disbursements just narrated, together with subsequent payments, had never in reality been made! In other words, that I induced the crews to go to sea—put down the revolution in the North—spent nine months in pacifying the revolutionary provinces—and yet fraudulently withheld 200,000 dollars, the only sum supplied during the whole of the expedition; the seamen meanwhile not only serving without reward, but being content with my monopolizing the portion of the prize-money known by them to have been awarded for the expulsion of the Portuguese in the preceding year, and notoriously in my possession! Their forbearance being so improbable as to refute itself, being contrary to common sense; even in the absence of the vouchers, which were transmitted to the Brazilian Government, but never acknowledged—I am able however to account for the whole from documents no less convincing than the vouchers transmitted.
It is true that nothing but the blind hatred of the old Portuguese faction towards me could have originated such charges, and that hatred was greatly increased by my pacification of the revolutionary provinces—this being the death-blow to the intrigues recommended by Palmella in favour of the mother country. As, however, the Brazilian Government did not acknowledge to me the receipt of my accounts, which must either exist to this day in the office of the Minister of Marine, or must have been destroyed, for the sake of traducing my character in justification of my prospective dismissal—it is incumbent on me to supply, for the information of the Brazilian people, explanations which have been repeatedly given to their Government, but which have not as yet been made public through the medium of the press—and that not for the information of the Brazilian people solely, but of the British public, who, in the absence of official imputations recently promulgated, have never before been put in possession of facts.
The Brazilian people may rest assured that whenever I received, for the use of the squadron, sums which itself had captured, I could neither then conceal the circumstance nor can I now disavow the fact—giving, however, the reasons which, for the interests of the Empire, justified my proceedings. The only instance of this kind which had hitherto occurred was my retention of 40,000 dollars captured at Maranham, and they who have perused the preceding narrative will be at no loss for the ground of my refusal to surrender to the Court of Admiralty a sum which would have been returned by that tribunal to their Portuguese brethren—nor for my resistance to the plot which the ministers had formed to take it by force from on board the flagship.