JB/122/047/001

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1 Letter C

Queens Square Place Westmr July 14
1807

Sir

I write this in obedience to the first of two requisitions
contained directed addressed to an by the Commissioners for the auditing
of the Public Accounts, and signified to me by your Letter of
the 10th instant, in and by which, after stating that it appears
that the sum of £2000 has been imprested to me upon
Account Before between the 14th Feby and 11th July 1794 to
build a Penitentiary House at Battersea, I am required to
make up and transmitt to their office on or before Wednesday the 15th instant on Account
of the said Sum

Before I enter into any particulars it will be necessary
for me to submitt to four five observations —

1. One is, that in my receiving the money in question no
intimation was given to me, nor did the nature of the transaction
indicate to me, that I was to render an account to any
one of the particulars of the expenditure of the money so received.
For the erecting of a Penitentiary House Establishment fit for the reception of a
in Convicts, not exceeding a certain number and for the maintenance
of for a certain length of time upon a plan agreed to any such number as should be delivered to me not exceeding that
number, I was to receive a certain sum; that would have been the sum charged against me:
the existence of
the establishment,
and the persons
maintained by it
for that time according
to that
plan would have
been my discharge.

2. That the expenditure of the money, though really applied
to the purpose for which it was destined, and a great part even in the
physical sense, under my own eyes, viz. in my own house
as above, with the appurtenances, was not applied under my
own direction, but solely under that of my Brother, Samuel
Bentham, [the Brigadier General Colonel and Knight of the Order
of St George since then Brigadier General in the Russian Service, since and] at present
Inspector General of his Majesty's Naval Works, whose name was to
have been formed with me comes after mine in the Official
Draught of the intended Contract, and by whom alone the
modes of employment therein intended to have been carried
into execution, viz. with the aid of machinery by unpracticed hands such as those of labouring Convicts of all descriptions were had been invented. or contrived and by under whose
direction alone the preparatory experimental works had all along
been, and after the receipt of the money in question continued
to be carried on to the last, and the accounts kept:
and that my said Brother has is now and for almost two years past has been absent out of this kingdom
viz. at Petersburgh upon a mission from his Majesty's government
and that I have unless in some particulars by accident no access to any papers of his relative to the
above accounts.

Identifier: | JB/122/047/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 122.
Date_1	1807-07-14	Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	122	Main Headings	Panopticon
Folio number	047	Info in main headings field
Image	001	Titles
Category	Correspondence	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	"Recto" is not in the list (recto, verso) of allowed values for the "Rectoverso" property.	Page Numbering	D1
Penner		Watermarks
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public	Letter 1929, vol. 7	ID Number	001
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