I thank you for the vol you sent me containing the trial of Lt Abbot. I am too blind to read it myself and have not yet found a friend of sufficient leisure to read it to me. It grieves me to the heart to see such publications & to read in the newspapers so many accounts of courts martial and courts of inquiry. However necessary they may be they can not fail to excite & perpetuate incurable contests & dissension [amond] the <officers> gentlemen of the navy <and> to diminish the confidence of the nation in the navy itself & to hurt the reputation of the navy in foreign countries. I am Sir with great esteem your obliged friend