On the 28th of February, 1842, he wrote again, as a kind of endorsement to one of Conolly’s letters:
TO THE SECRETARY OF GOVERNMENT IN INDIA.
Sir,
The Governor-General in Council will be informed by the accompanying abstract how far my position here [and that of Captain Conolly] has been sacrificed.
I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your obedient, humble servant,
Charles Stoddart.
The words within brackets were erased—most probably by Conolly.[216]
But Stoddart, though he may have resented the injustice of sacrificing him to no purpose, was ready to become a sacrifice if, by so doing, he could promote the interests of his country. “I beg sincerely,” he wrote on the 5th of April, “that no one will regret any sacrifice of me, for it is nothing at all. It may yet not be requisite—but if it be, I regard the probable result, from the action of government in doing justice to others, and bringing all these countries to reasonable conduct, as fully compensating a much greater sacrifice than that of so humble an individual as I am.”[217] If anything could increase the sorrow with which we contemplate the fate of this brave man, it would be a perusal of such noble sentences as these.