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(Banks Papers)
Sir Joseph Banks go Govr Bligh
Soho Square
Aug.t 25.1808.
My Dear Sir
I beg you to be assurd that my long silence has not been owing to the least diminution of that friendship & respect to you which I have for so many Years been proud to acknowledge it has arisen entirely from an increase of bodily ill health & from my fits of the Gout having accidentally had posession of me at the very time when opportunities of writing to you presented themselves.
I have never met with such a series of misconduct & of misrepresentation as has occurd in the case of Lieut. Short. I am confident that it is a matter of study with him how he can most effectually offend & irritate those Superiors with whom he is to act in order to extort from them severities in return for his Crimes, which he may afterwards complain of as oppressions & cruelties which render him deserving of compassion & recompence, such was his conduct here & so effectually did his claim for compassion operate upon the Court Martial that tried him as to produce an unmerited & unsupported charge against you. I was most unfortunate in being at the time confind to my Bed, I could therefore only lie still & let the storm blow over, I have since made application to Lord Mulgrave on your behalf & I hope made good impression on his Lordship's mind, for he has sent to me Copies of Caffin's letter & Tetley's Affidavit by the hands of Barton the Secretary, which I think are sufficient documents, when thus forwarded to me who claimd [claimed] them as your friend in an official manner to prove that the Admiralty admit that the censure of the Court had no foundation in evidence, I trust & hope