| Description | Dear Friend,
It is a great comfort to me that Mr. Nicholls has found the originals mentioned in his letter sent you with this, which pray return, as it is a record that I very much value, and will send the bearer for it to morrow morning; and pray send with it the sketch of an answer which I made to Mr. Hog's reflections on my character which is upon eleven pages of post paper, as I am under the necessity of refering to it.
When you are well enough to write what may occur to you as a proper confirmation of the letter you wrote to me the 18 September 1779, I should be very thankful if you would write somewhat to the tenor the enclosed sketch, put into your own better words. I send with this copy of your letter 18 September 1779 upon half a sheet of paper, that any letter you may write might upon the same half sheet.
I rejoyce to hear you have been at your works.
I am ever gratefully and affectionately your friend,
Samuel Garbett
With the letter is the following:
Draft letter. Matthew Boulton [Soho] to Archibald Campbell (-). c. 13 Sep. 1802. [In Samuel Garbett's hand.]
Sketch of the tenor of a letter that I wish Mr. Boulton to write to Archibald Campbell, Esqr.
Sir,
Mr. Hog having asserted that long before 1772 'Samuel Garbett was insolvent and bankrupt, altho' by granting securities to some of his creditors upon his remaining stock in Carron Company, and amusing the rest with speculative schemes of paying all his debts, and afterwards by a voluntary conveyance of his effects in Scotland, which, besides his Carron stock, consisted of his works at Prestonpans, to a trustee for his creditors, he contrived to evade a commission of bankruptcy in England, or a sequestration of his estate in Scotland, untill the year 1782'-
Mr. Garbett thinks it necessary to defend himself against those imputations by introduceing copies of letters that I believe were wrote in September and October 1779 by Messrs. John Barker, Samuel Palmer, Robert Bage, Peter Capper Senr., Francis Parrott, Jacob Wilkinson, John Turner, Lacey Primall, J. Johnson, Alexander Baxter, and Landell & Chambers, when his creditors in Scotland reccommended an assignment of his effects to Mr. William Dick as trustee. Those original letters I see Mr. Nicholls (who is executor to the late Mr. Baxter) writes to Mr. Garbett he has found among Mr. Baxter's papers. I also wrote a letter and believe the annexed is a true copy of it; but Mr. Nicholls writes to Mr. Garbett that he hath not found the original among Mr. Baxter's papers. I certainly had for many years prior to that time (and ever since then have) had the opinion expressed in those letters of Mr. Garbett's conduct and integrity, and I have no reason to believe that any one of the above mentioned gentlemen have had a different opinion, but, on the contrary, I know that many of them have given most unquestionable proof of reliance on his integrity.
As the letter I wrote to Mr. Garbett 18 September 1779 is not at present found, he was desirous I should write as I have done to you, which I beg you will please to accept as an appology for giving you this trouble.
I am very respectfully, sir
Copy letter. Matthew Boulton (Birmingham) to Samuel Garbett [Prestonpans]. 18 Sep. 1779. (Transcript by Garbett. Docketed in error (by William Cheshire) 1799.)
(Copy.)
Dear Sir,
I have received your favour of the 8th instant, and have also received the copy of the deed of assignment of your effects to Mr. William Dick in trust for your creditors, and also of the deed of accession.
I agree so far in opinion with the rest of your English creditors that it does not seem reasonable that we in England should be excluded from the management of your affairs, if it had been practicable to have admitted some of us. But I am not only so well convinced by the reasons you give that the measures proposed are the most effectual for the benefit of all your creditors and of yourself, but I also have such a full confidence both in your judgement and in your honour that I cannot hesitate a moment to give you my full consent and approbation to the measures reccommended by you, and I sincerely hope that they may have the proposed effect of obliging those to come to a clear statement who have been so industrious to retard and confound.
There is nothing I more ardently wish for than a continuation of your health and fortitude, being persuaded that, if you enjoy those blessings, you will in the end accomplish the rest.
I am, dear sir, unalterably and affectionately yours,
(signed) Matthew Boulton |