and being unwilling to put him to even temporary inconvenience. As soon, therefore, as he returns from the Coast (before which the services in respect of which the allowance is charged remain incomplete), I shall be prepared to settle with him. In doing so, however, I beg to express most respectfully, but most decidedly, the feeling which I cannot help entertaining of the harshness (to use no stronger term) of the Local Government requiring peremptory payment of a sum due from the Company in respect of services which are only in course of performance and yet incomplete; while it declines to pay a debt of three or four years standing, which in its origin was one of pure accommodation to the Government, and payment of which was requested nearly