Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall sp4.djvu/87

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78
POST-CAPTAINS OF 1815.

may afford the heartless employers a temporary gratification: they may exult in silence, in their fancied achievements, and flatter themselves that they have accomplished their purposes; but they will be sure, eventually, to meet their just desert. And though whilst in a short lived triumph they may succeed in wounding the peace of the individual against whom their poisoned arrow had been directed, yet the day of retribution will sooner or later arrive, when they will discover that the wound they have inflicted, and caused to smart for the hour, has teen healed by the soothing antidote of sympathy, manifested by the society by whom that individual is surrounded; then their best punishment will be in their own hearts – accusing reflections, which will goad them during many successive years of their future lives.

“It now becomes my pleasing duty to beg that you will assure all those whom you represent, of my very grateful acknowledgment for the flattering kindness they have done me. The assurance they now make, that my humble services in this district, during the last seven months, have been useful to the public good, causes me to feel most happy that I should have been selected by his Excellency the Governor for the duty which I was so unexpectedly called upon to perform.

“Their generous proceedings on this occasion I shall not fail to lay before his Excellency. It will afford the best proof of the gratitude which the much greater part of the inhabitants of this town, whom you have been appointed to represent, entertain for the protection that has been given by the presence of a ship of war with a surrogate on board during the winter: and should it fall to my lot, at any future period, to be called upon to execute the same duties, the past will, I trust, prove to them an earnest of the future, that my best zeal shall ever be shewn in promoting the public good.

“Permit me individually, Sir, to thank you and the gentlemen who formed the deputation conveying to me the address of the majority of the inhabitants of this town and its vicinity, for the handsome manner in which you have expressed to me their sentiments; and in the confident hope that your exertions will tend to bring to punishment the malicious writer of the libel in question, I have the honor to be, &c.

(Signed)J. Tour Nicolas, Captain of H.M.S. Egeria,
and Surrogate for the Island of Newfoundland.

To James Bayly, Esq. Deputy Collector
of his Majesty’s Customs, &c.

The Egeria returned to England in May, 1822; and in August following »he was selected to form one of the royal squadron that escorted his Majesty on his visit to Scotland: she was afterwards sent to the North Sea for the prevention of smuggling.