1. The enclosure (2 pp.; docketed by Wagner) was Bicker’s 16 Oct. 1806 signed statement declaring that in March 1806, knowing his end was near, U.S. consul Marien Lamar had requested that Bicker take charge of the consulate upon Lamar’s death, until word was received from the United States regarding the appointment of a new consul. On the morning after Lamar’s passing, however, a British merchant named John Light Banger requested and received the governor’s permission for Banger’s twenty-one-year-old clerk, George Welsh, to supervise the office. Bicker had not applied for the position because he deemed it indecent to do so before Lamar’s burial, and also “supposed the Vice [consul] was competent to the trust.” On 10 Oct. 1806, Bicker wrote, Banger and Welsh refused his request to forward letters, including one for JM, to New York via their brig Commerce. He protested that it was their duty as keepers of the U.S. consulate to do so, and they relented the next day, ordering the captain “to touch at any Port nearer Washington.”