323
PAPERS OF MrR.ABE.AU BuoN.AP.ARTE LAM.AR
ing me with having sold to the emigrants lands to which I had no title, and praying my dismissal as Consul General. Knowing that your high sense of official responsibility and of honor as a gentleman would prevent you from being instrumental to the injury of reputation from ex parte proceedings of any kind, and knowing that a public officer, HS he is amenable to, is also under the protection of the government, whose honor is concerned in guarding him against wanton interruption or aggression, I am not apprehensive that you would act directly on such a matter until I had had an oppor- tunity of explanation, which I now do myself the honor of presenting. The facts are these: . That during the year 1836, and before my appointment as Consul General, or having been at all in Texas, and before the first Congress, or the passage of any laws affecting settle- ments on Empresario claims, Mr Jonathan Ikin of England being in this country, in the course of conversation, proposed to me the purchal"-e of some Empresario Texas script then in my possession. I expressly told him that every thing was uncertain in Texas; that I had bought these rights with a view of settling them myself, and that I could not give him anY, assurance, guaranty, or warranty respecting them, but that if he bought them from me, he must take them wholly on his own risqne, and be put upon his own enquiries without any responsibility on my part. To all this he agreed, and asked me to endorse the script. I told him if I did so, it would only be by endorsing the truth of the case, and he accepted the endorsement in words either exactly or sul,J- stantially as follows. '"l'his script is endorsed without any risque or responsibility of any kind on my part," and to this I signed my name. I refer to the endorsement on the back of the script. He had men- tioned to me that he could procure flour at Dantzic, I think, at four and a half dollars per barrel, and wheat I think from Odessa, v-ecy cheap, which he would have converted into flour, and this was a super- inducing reason with me for letting him have the script, with no~e o:f which I had parted. He offered to give me his negociable notes for the amount, which he accordingly gave me, payable at the Bank of Louisiana in New Orleans. I had proposed to him to discharge these notes on or before a given date, by the delivery of flour at New Orleans, for the Te:xian army, at the outward prices, as he professed to be friendly to Texas. and as I expressly told him that I intended the flour as a present to the Texian army or navy as the Government might point out, and this was the reason why the notes were m;ade payable at New Orleans, and at a date so long as to give much more than the negociable time for the de- livery of the flour. All this was firmly agreed to by us both, and I expressly told him that as I intended the flour as a present to the Texian army, I preferred it by far to the money. But he afterwards came to me and told me that he could not afford to furnish the flour at the outward prices, but would freel,v agree to furnish it at the N cw Orleans prices-when it arrived there. Finding that he was not disposed to make the sacrifice he professed, and that the only alternative was to lose the flour, or agree to his proposition; I consented to take the flour at the New Orleans prices, and that if not delivered, the money was payable at the bank. This then being concluded, he said he would im- mediately write to Europe, respecting it, and undertook that the flour
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