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You inform me that His Excellency finds it impossible to understand my first explanation and I have to state that I construed Mr Pauncefote's letter as charging, although I was not indicated by name, the Office I hold with having made threats to him through the medium of his Clerk - I have Mr Pauncefote's letter before me but I believe it bears no other construction and in my letter of the 13th I wished to convey that "the threats" could not by any possibility have emanated from me.
I knew nothing of Mr Pauncefote sending a copy of Mr ... to the Treasury till you informed me of it by sending me his letter. I never wrote or said anything that could be construed into a belief on my part that Mr Pauncefote had not, as he asserted, offered at the Treasury on the 3rd Instant those rates which he should have paid before the last day in August.
This is a matter of opinion as to the meaning of part of Mr Pauncefote's letter. I shall be equally frank in avowal that I did not believe in the correctness of Mr Pauncefote's letter when, upon the authority of his Clerk, he asserted that he had been threatened with legal proceedings at the Treasury.
I was not so, in the first place because Mr Pauncefote's letter merely illustrates his own dark was used, not threats to him. Secondly, because I had before the 3rd Instant obtained that process pointed out in the 16th clause of Ordinance No 5 of 1863 as my remedy in all cases of dilatory or unpunctual payments.
Thirdly, because if any threats could by any possibility have been held out indirectly to Mr Pauncefote, the only person who in my absence could have done so was Mr Hyndman, who had however been absent from the duties of his office since 2 o'clock P.M. on the 2nd Instant when taken ill he had to go home, since which he has not returned to the Treasury, consequently I have no hesitation in disbelieving ...