note: transcription publicly contributed - please contact us with comments, errors or omisions

into the Province, though two of my Sons have built and improved on my Lands, and two that remain with me are looking forward to no other means of subsistence than from the cultivation of Land. The talk of my monopolizing is more like a burlesque upon me than serious talk. No person can be further from monopolizing than myself. I have been commonly able with constant industry both of myself and my family and by great economy, merely to keep ourselves decently clothed and to supply my table with the simplest comforts of Life, nor can the eager accumulation of wealth in any may be justly chargeable upon me. I have this thirty — four years past been acting in your department and think you will not say you have ever found me using sinister means for that purpose. Having a large family five of them sons born here, and expecting soon to leave them all in a way by honest industry to obtain a comfortable subsistance, and further than that I do not feel at all anxious for them, believing mediocrity to be the safest and the happiest condition of life. A Word more and I will dismiss the disagreeable subject of self vindication.

      You have several times intimated to me that I lay under no little reproach for my management of the Maroon concern, such reproach has originated with those who either were wholly ignorant of the part I acted in that concern, or who have wilfully misrepresented it. I withstood with order and perseverance the system of idleness and profusion countenanced and set on foot by the agents of the Island of Jamaica. And though they had so established their system that it was found impossible ever to retrieve the mischief they did, I endeavoured, and not without a degree of success, at least to prevent fraudulent dealing in the concern, which I would not say for myself, if it was not well known to Gentlemen whose veracity will not be doubted.

      Instead of being a sharer in that kind of dealing I saved to Government in the final settlement of the concern, by the detection of attempted frauds, more than the whole that was paid me for my