guard against their becoming a claim on the Company, as part of my estate, in the event of my death occurring in the course of the service, on which I was then entering.

This, Sir, is the plain history of the transaction. I should be ashamed to request, that you would communicate it to the honourable Court of Directors, whose time is too valuable for the intrusion of a subject so uninteresting, but that it is become a point of indispensable duty; I must therefore request the favour of you to lay it, at a convenient time, before them. In addressing it to you personally, I yield to my own feelings of the respect, which is due to them as a body, and to the assurances, which I derive from your experienced civilities, that you will kindly overlook the trouble imposed by it.