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manifest a blameable apathy; and he cannot but know that under happier auspices, the exploit of Sir Roger Curtis, in saving the drowning Spaniards, before Gibraltar, is a theme celebrated by the painter and poet, and was rewarded by the highest patronage; but for certain, the exertions of that highly esteemed officer, so worthily and so universally venerated, were not greater, either with respect to personal danger, or as to bodily or mental protrusiveness, than were those of your Royal Highness’s memorialist at the mouth of the Adour. But how different has been the meed: he has been, indeed, promoted to the rank of Commander since that period; but it was for his general services, and this boon has been attended with, first, the immediate loss of his employment as agent of transports: and, secondly, it has disabled him from getting two of his sons into Christ’s Hospital on Travers’s foundation, to which he would otherwise have had a right, worth at the least five hundred pounds. His meed, therefore, on account of the above services, seems chiefly to rest in his having been personally thanked and honourably mentioned by Sir John Hope, in his despatches to the Duke of Wellington, and by Rear-Admiral Penrose to the naval commander-in-chief. Lord Keith; – distinctions which he highly values, and which he trusts are no light recommendations to some more substantial recompense.

“In conclusion, your Memorialist presumes to hope that your Royal Royal Highness will, on viewing these premises, be graciously pleased to cause his name to be placed on the distribution-list. The naval commander-in-chief. Lord Keith, approves his claim; and even at the Admiralty its rejection is considered a hardship: the very boat’s crew who were with him are included in the list which he himself is called upon to furnish; and he understands that Captain O’Reilly, by virtue of the Order in Council, on account of his great exertions, and the great peril and sufferings which he underwent at the Adour, is to be remunerated beyond other officers of his class; but your Memorialist it was who went before him or any one else in the perilous path of duty on that river; who led them, or marked out to all of them the way; who, when that officer was upset, saved him and several others, to render those exertions so conspicuously noticed. The immortal Admiral Nelson, in order to incite others to emulate his deeds, though at a humble distance, assumed, with his Sovereign’s approbation, for his motto, ‘Palmam qui meruit.’ Then be it so. The parliamentary grant, to which your Royal Highness gave the fiat, proceeds doubtless upon this principle. How then can your petitioner be rejected? But if certain official forms are an obstacle, he rejoices at the circumstance; because it places him within the immediate reach of the beams of your royal munificence, and will therefore, he feels confident, cause him to be remunerated in some other manner, which, as it will be a personal favour done him, and a favour from the Great, is doubly a favour; how much more so when it proceeds from Royalty, and is extended to so humble a Petitioner, now, after such long services, pining on half-