although made in time of peace, a crime; and consequently, that if La Perouse executed his instructions, he was no better than a spy at the different ports where he put in.  Let this, Sir, for the moment be admitted; and I ask what proofs you have that I have made such remarks?  You will probably say, I intended to make them.  True, but intention is not action.  I might have altered my intentions on coming into the port, and finding our two nations to be at war:  you cannot know what alteration a knowledge of the war might have made in my sentiments.  We do indeed judge much of the merit or demerit of an action by the intention with which it is performed; but in all cases there must be an action performed to constitute any certain merit or demerit amongst men.  Now in my case there appears to have been intention only; and even this intention I have before shown to be consistent with the practice of your own nation, and I believe of all nations.

As it appears that Your Excellency had formed a determination to stop the Cumberland, previously even to seeing me, if a specious pretext were wanting for it, it would have been more like wisdom to have let me alone until the eve of sailing, and then to have seized my journal; where it is possible something better than intention might have been fixed upon as a cause for making me a prisoner.  This would have been a mean action, and altogether unworthy of you or your nation; but it might have answered your purpose better than the step now taken.  I say there appears to have been a previous determination to stop the Cumberland, and from this cause; that on the first evening of my arrival, and before any examination was made into my papers (my commission and passport excepted), you told me impetuously that I was imposing upon you.  Now I cannot think that an officer of your rank and judgment could act either so ungentlemanlike, or so unguardedly, as to make such a declaration without proof; unless his reason had been blinded by passion, or a previous determination that it should be so, nolens volens.  In your order of the 21st last it is indeed said, that the captain-general has acquired conviction that I am the person I pretend to be, and the same for whom a passport was obtained by the English government from the First Consul; it follows then, as I am willing to explain it, that I am not and was not an impostor.  This plea was given up when a more plausible one was thought to be found; but I cannot compliment Your Excellency upon this alteration in your position, for the first, although false, is the most tenable post of the two.

Trusting that upon a due consideration of all the circumstances, you will be pleased to fulfil the intention for which the passport was given, I have the honour to be,

From my confinement,
Your Excellency’s obedient servant,
Dec. 25, 1803. 
Matthew Flinders.

In the evening, a letter was brought me by a soldier from general De Caen, and the haste with which it had been sent inspired favourable hopes; I did not expect the visit of the interpreter until the following day, and therefore attempted to decipher the letter by the help of a French dictionary, with a degree of anxiety which its contents were but little calculated to satisfy:  it was as follows.