1823 Jan¼y 21 Trip. H. to Q.A. Provision for death or absence©J.B.

In an affair of such preeminent importance, and under the disadvantage of so

wide an interval in the fields of space and time between the proposed

contracting parties, common prudence prescribes the making provision, in so far

as possible against all such accidents as the nature of the case is open to,©

more especially /and in particular/ death and casual /but necessary or casual/

absence from the spot to which a communication is addressed.

From /By/ a Mahometan whose residence in any country of which this which I am

using is the language a letter such as you could not naturally speaking have

been written /penned/: at any rate without assistance in the article of /in

regard to/ language. Mr Bentham is not unknown to you: your friendship and as he

believes your good opinion I have heard him speak of as one of the prime number

among the most honorable and valuable of his possessions. /It is by information

from him, that this unbounded confidence, of which you have been seeing such

unequivocal marks, has been produced./ On the present occasion he is the person

/friend/ of whose pen I have been fortunate enough to obtain the use: as for me,

though in all this there is not a sentence that I could have written, neither is

there a sentence of the import of which I do not regard myself as possessing a

sufficient conception: and in saying this it is my own handwriting that from

first to last as you see[?] I have employed

Add J.B. to receive duplicate J.B. or his substitute H.'s substitute