"New York, August 26th, 1839. "My dear Friend-My first impression, on reading your letter, was to leave it unanswered, but the thought that you and your family would infer that I could not in conscience, and still more my duties as a christian, as I comprehend them, have decided me to take the pen.

"I see you then, Ellen, forgetting more and more the holiest of duties, and wishing to shut out all possibility of a reconciliation with your husband; desiring to break the bond which God himself has seen fit to form, and prohibit you from breaking-the most sacred among men; fleeing with your child, and venturing to take the responsibility on your head. All this from following the counsel of strangers.

"I have again addressed you in the language of confidence and affection, and you have answered by unjust reproaches and accusations. I have again offered to you tenderness and devotion, and you have replied to me by expressions of the most entire alienation, and could even treat as exaggeration the cruel sickness of my beloved father. I suffer the more from this terrible delusion, because my own thoughts are so different. I desire to withdraw you from these, and to avert from you, as well as our child, the miserable consequences which inevitably will follow this conduct, if you persist in it.

"You reply in bitter accusations, in your last letter, and tell me that I have never answered them. It is true the hope of seeing my wife return to other sentiments has alone prevented me.

"In denying some, in explaining the natural causes which have produced others, I should have opened wounds afresh, excited your feelings, and caused difficulties which I wished to avoid. I hoped that calm reflection and a long separation-above all, the birth of our child, would have changed your feelings towards me, would have awakened your conscience, and that silence might be the best means of engaging your confidence and affection.

"But, now, the time has come, when I ought to do justice to myself, to our child. You make serious accusations against me, Ellen, with regard to America. My only answer is this:-read again your letter to my mother, and her answer-read mine. I do not know of any other engagement, and these letters speak for themselves. As to the promises, which have been implied, of my passing the winter in Paris, I know nothing of them; and to think that I would leave my country, and the comforts and advantages which belong to that; all my relations, my friends, and the peculiar benefits which Providence has lavished on my position there; that I should thus sacrifice my domestic happiness, to go to pass my winter in the most dissipated capital in Europe-it is too absurd to find an echo any where.

"You have said to me, that I have never made apologies for my behaviour towards your friends. I do not know how to answer this. My heart is wounded with the injuries, insults, and misfortunes which they have not feared to cause me, as well as my family, to experience; and here I include your conduct since my arrival. I do not believe, my dear friend, that I ought to assume the position of a suppliant, who asks pardon; and if, at times, I have been hasty and inconsiderate, I think I may expect that you should forget it.

"To your request to spare you more unhappiness, and to leave you what may remain for you—tranquillity in my absence, I have replied to you lately, and I repeat, that I do not wish to compel you to return. I do not desire my wife, if she do not return to me with the sentiments of a wife for her husband. But I take this final occasion to induce you to reflect on the immense responsibility you have incurred, not only with regard to me and your child, but before God, and what you call society, in voluntarily deserting your husband, and withdrawing a child from its father; and whether you will be ready to render an account to humanity, and before your final Judge, for the violations of the most inviolable obligations. Have you regarded the inevitable consequences of such conduct for the future, if you persist in it? The loss of all the affection of your husband, and that too of your son: the certainty that he will be educated by those whom you have voluntarily made strangers. Reflect seriously, before throwing yourself in all the horrors, from the responsibility of which I absolve myself.

"I now come to your last demand that I should leave you your child. My heart bleeds at the idea of a separation, but I am resolved I will have him again. There is a duty resting on me as a father, as a Swiss, as a member of society, which leaves me no alternative. I ought to do what I can to watch over his education, whether for this life or the other. He is the natural heir of my patrimony; he is destined, therefore, to enjoy, in his country, a position which he cannot find elsewhere, and only if he is educated there: I am surprised that you should wish to deprive him of it. I am not disposed, too, not to enjoy it, and I feel that I have need of some consolations, and wish no longer to see the most sacred rights of nature thus violated in my person. It is not accordant with my views, to leave the moral and religious education of my child in other hands than my own. No, Ellen, this cannot be. I must soon receive my child, if it please God, but Í do not desire to take him from his mother. Happy, if that mother would recognise her fault, and put herself in that position that I may receive her again as I desire. If separation ensues, it is not I who have done it: it is by no fault of mine. I would add, that it would be well to make a voluntary sacrifice to your duty and your obligations, in the fulfilment of which you will ever find the sweetest, if not the only, happiness.

"As to my incontestable legal rights in this respect, I am assured of them by all, and they are clearly recognised by your friends, as I understand. The idea of a permanent flight, on any arrangements whatever, is equally irrational, without taking into account the state of perpetual suffering which would be attached to it. Neither days, nor weeks, nor months, nor years, nor constant efforts, could induce me to change my determination in this respect. It is so positive, that if to regain the child it is necessary to claim the mother I shall not hesitate.

"I write you this letter with pain, Ellen, thinking of yours in receiving it; but I have thought it my duty to speak to you, once more, the language of affectionate remonstrance and of warning. May God open your mind and heart to perceive your position and your duties, in their true aspect, in order that a return to them may reunite us, and give us

that holy happiness, which we are still fitted to enjoy; for it is always possible.

"I have but one thing to add. If you have thought, Ellen, that there would be humiliation in returning to me and to us, this is an erroneous idea. A return to duty is never degrading; and every religious person will respect you more, if you make the sacrifice of a mistaken sentiment, in all which is necessary, on the altar of domestic duties and christian meekness."

Your petitioner further suggests, as to such portions of the said return as imply censure on him, for declining to negotiate through third persons, with reference to his incontestable rights, that he came to the United States, a husband and a father seeking to recover his wife and child, who were withheld from him, willing and anxious to conciliate as long as conciliation seemed practicable; but he has always believed, and believes still, that negotiation, through third persons, on such a subject as his right to his wife and child, could lead to no other result than to weaken his claim to the protection of the laws, on which even as a stranger he confidently relies.

Your petitioner further suggests, that so far from having such opportunities of freely seeing his child, as would be afforded even in cases of legalized separation, since his arrival in this country, now more than a year ago, and before the issuing of your Honours' writ, he had seen it but three times. His visits were not only made the subject of formal and ceremonious negociation, but, though your petitioner, with his counsel, readily gave their promise, to make no effort forcibly to change the possession of the child, he was subjected to the supervision of persons stationed in the room, to watch the caresses which he bestowed upon his child. In reply to a request to see his child three times a week, he was informed that he should only see it three times a month; and at each of the interviews which he had with his child, in the city of New York, two individuals, utter strangers to him, whose names he has been informed are John McKeon and Alexander E. Hosack, remained in the room the whole time.

Your petitioner renews the suggestion made in his original application to your Honours, the truth of which is admitted in the said return, that special legislation, in no less than three states, was attempted with a view to divest the rights of your petitioner over his wife and child. It is now admitted to have been done, at the instance, and for the special purposes, of the respondents, though under the pretext of patriotic solicitude for the public welfare. Your petitioner is not aware that any such effort was ever made in Massachusetts, where the respondents have long resided and are well known. But, without notice to your petitioner, legislative interposition was clandestinely invoked, first in New Jersey, then in Pennsylvania, and finally in New York, to divest his most sacred rights, and to meet a special case, for which existing laws were supposed to be inadequate. Fortunately for your petitioner, the repugnance of the legislatures of these states to interfere with vested rights and well ascertained obligations, prevented enactments which would have been discreditable to the country, and attended with the most injurious consequences. In the State of New York,

where, alone, an act of legislation was thus surreptitiously obtained, the executive of the state interposed his negative, a copy of which is hereto appended, to be taken as part of these suggestions, in the views of which the legislature acquiesced, and the attempted measure was abandoned.

Your petitioner further, in conclusion, suggests to your Honours, that the admission, distinctly made in the said return, that these attempts at special legislation were not only made at the instance of the respondents, and for this very case, but had reference to children of a more advanced age, affords new reason for the restoration to him of his child, at this time, when, under existing and well approved laws, your Honours, in the exercise of your sound discretion, have the power to decree it. To deny the prayer of your petitioner will be, in fact, to deny him access to his child. He does not conceal the necessity that will oblige him to return to his native country, where his avocations may long and exclusively confine him. It will be impossible for him to gratify his affection by occasional visits, and should he be enabled at some future day to come to claim his child, when it shall have attained riper years, he may find his now undisputed rights divested by clandestine legislation; and he will, he fears, too surely find the mind of his child alienated from that one of his parents whose surname he bears, and who cannot reproach himself with having, by his conduct or example, done him an injury.

Your petitioner, therefore, suggests to your Honours, that, in order to determine what will be for the best interests of this his child, thus wrongfully and causelessly withheld from him, your Honours will examine into the alleged causes of his wife's desertion. He entertains the confident belief that your Honours, in ascertaining that such desertion is unauthorized by the laws of God or man, and is justified by no act or omission of your petitioner, will decree and adjudge to him his child, leaving to his said wife to determine whether she will separate herself from her child, or, by returning to her husband, whose duty it will be to forgive and welcome her, discharge at once the sacred obligations of a mother and a wife.

G. GRAND D'HAUTEVILLE.

Paul Daniel Gonsalve Grand d'Hauteville, the above named petitioner, being duly sworn, says, that the facts set forth in the above suggestions, are true to the best of his knowledge and belief. G. GRAND D'HAUTEVILLE.

Sworn and subscribed before me,

July 16, 1840,

GEO. GRISCOM, Ald.

The accompanying exhibits, A, B, C, D, E, the petitioner desires to be taken as part of these his suggestions.

"A Monsieur,

Exhibit, A.

From Mr. Sears to Mr. Couvreu.

"Monsieur Frederic Couvreu,

"Boston, 23d September, 1838.

"Curator de Madame Ellen Grand d'Hauteville,

"Dear Sir,-It gives me pleasure to find that the Justice of Peace du Circle de la Tour, has appointed you Curator of the interests of Madame Ellen Grand d'Hauteville. I feel satisfied that under your guardianship every care will be taken of her. As Mr. Deodati omitted

to give me a certificate of the marriage of my daughter, will you be so obliging as to obtain it in legal form, and with the attestation of two respectable witnesses to the ceremony, and forward it to me to the care of Messrs. Hottinguer and Co., bankers in Paris. It is with grief and mortification I feel the necessity of apprizing you, in your present capacity, that the conduct of Mr. Gonsalve Grand d'Hauteville, almost from the first week of his marriage, has been so strange, and unkind to his wife, and to her mother, as to cause them daily sorrow, at a time too, when, from their position, every motive of honour and tenderness seemed to call upon him to protect them. It has been fully shown to me, by letters from Madame Ellen, and Madame Sears, that it sometimes exhibited itself in cold selfishness, and sometimes in acts of rudeness. In Paris, the outrage upon his wife's feelings was so great, as to oblige her, in extreme fear, to take refuge in the hotel of the American minister, and finally induced her, on her arrival here, to claim my protection, and the security of my roof, against further troubles. Since Madame Ellen's residence with me, she has received from him only trifling or unfeeling letters, in which there is not the least sympathy expressed for her sufferings, or her declining health, nor any regret at the mortifying position in which his strange conduct has placed her. And to me, on the 24th of July last, he wrote in a style to which I am wholly unaccustomed, and find it difficult readily to submit to. The only answer I shall make to his letter, will be through you, and is my present communication. In speaking of Paris, which his expressions before marriage always led both his wife and her parents to suppose he intended to make his winter residence, and which he knew was very desirable, on account of Madame Ellen's health and other causes, he says, "que jamais je n'ai eu la pensée d'être géné d'y vivre par celle qui, ce me semble, doit mettre le bonheur et les sentimens du coeur de son mari avant les plaisirs, et qu'en parlant, comme je l'ai fait, de séjours à Paris et en Italie (ce dont j'aurais lieu de me repentir, si jamais Ellen cherchait à en abuser) ma conscience me crie hautement, que ce n'était guerre un engagement."-Perhaps he will say the same of the voyages to America" Paris n'est pas la ville d'une jeune ménage, il y a trop de dangers divers: cette chose est trop déclicate." He adds, "Je suis maintenant responsable de ma femme devant Dieu, de son bonheur et de sa conduite; et je vous préviens, Monsieur, que je croirai devoir lui addresser de justes reproches, tant qu'elle ne vivra pour son mari avant tout, et je la croirai coupable tant qu'elle ne se dévouera pas en entier pour mon bonheur. Je pose en principe, qu' une femme, qui