Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1859 edition. Excerpt:...the facts, can arrive at any other conclusion, save that of intentional falsification to serve the interests of a Foreign Power." It was in the course of the foregoing transaction that was brought home to me the idea of treachery in the bosom of the British State and Cabinet. In this volume it is used as the Key of all transactions. It therefore appears to me that this is the place where I may be justified in approaching it directly, explaining the position in which I have been placed--the motives under which I have acted, and the steps which I have taken. I owe this as a duty to the reader, and I conceive that an impartial consideration of my statement is a duty which he owes to me. In the course I have pursued I had no option. I had the misfortune to know what it would have been guilty to conceal. I was fully convinced that by discharging my duty I must incur obloquy; whilst by closing my lips I could have secured the highest objects of personal ambition. I was as one who by accident found himself in the midst of a conspiracy, or witness to the preparation of a murder. A portion of the circumstances to which I refer is before the reader. I may have been mistaken in my conclusions, but I acted upon them so as to bring to evidence their truth or my mistake. I laid them before my Sovereign. The Minister, the object of the charge, immediately changed his course, and adopted the very measures which he had repudiated. It was my misfortune to believe this change to be real, within two years he had frustrated every measure he had adopted and had reverted to the course he had abandoned. It was then that I publicly proclaimed to the Nation what I had before privately presented to its Sovereign. I now repaired a neglect of which I had been...