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 of advancement and prosperity which I had in vain sighed for, and fondly pictured to myself as the certain consequence of a thorough reformation in principle. The Governor very coolly answered that it was not merely my having behaved well for two years at the coal-river, but I must conduct myself with propriety for a series of years, before I could expect, or ought to apply for, any mark of indulgence. This answer was certainly disheartening in the extreme; and I was equally unsuccessful in an application to the then acting commissary, William Broughton, Esq., who, although he never saw me until my arrival in the Indian, not being in the colony during my former term of exile, yet this gentleman, from hearing only of my repeated frauds while employed in the office of Governor King, (and which no doubt were much exaggerated by report and repetition after my departure, for Europe,) had conceived so violent a dislike to me, that he gave me a decisive, though civil, denial; and I have since heard, that he declared I should not hold a situation in the commissariat, if there was not another clerk in the colony. God grant that some well-disposed christian, who reads these Memoirs of my unhappy Life, may induce this gentleman, for whose shining talents and excellent qualities I have the highest respect, to retract his discouraging declaration, and to admit me to an employment, however subordinate, in his