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I am much obliged to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty for permission to attend at the office and read the Minute in which I had reason to believe that my name had been inserted and singled out, and commented on, for an official act of the whole Board of which Sir Sydney Dacres and I were members.
I am exceedingly obliged to my late colleague for having requested that the Memorandum in question may be read by me, and I shall be glad to find that my impression that my name has been interpolated in that Minute is unfounded.
I think it due to the Board to disclaim any attempt to demand as a right any Minute or Document framed by them.
This is an acknowledged axiom of public life, and the last I should seek to infringe.
I may, however, remind you that it fell to my lot, as entrusted by my late colleagues with certain branches of the public service at the Admiralty, to have to recommend the reversal of decisions of former Boards as recommended to them by persons holding similar positions.
Experiment, more accurate knowledge, the lapse of time made these changes of policy, in my opinion, advisable.
But I should have deemed myself guilty of gross impertinence if, in recommending these changes, I had interpolated the names of Admiral Fanshawe, or Admiral Frederick, or Admiral Drummond, or Admiral Eden, whose decisions may have come under review; and I should have conceived myself to have been taking a most improper course, if by any chance I had been driven to mention the names of those distinguished officers, if I had failed to acquaint them with the fact.
I do not pretend to place myself on an equality with the officers, my predecessors, whom I have named, and am no judge whether the distinguished ability of my successor justifies him in adopting a course which I could not have pursued to those who preceded me, but justice to my late colleagues and to those who may hold the office which I filled, however unworthily, demands that I should strenuously assert the impropriety of attributing the acts of a Board to an individual member of it, or of recording and animadverting