My dear Sir,

Though I have not written to you yet you were not so soon
forgotten. Nor can you so easily be erased from my memory as
my negligence might seem to imply. In truth few persons
have impressed my mind with a deeper sentiment of respect
than yourself; you have that of open and frank in your
character which if not in my own, is yet so congenial to my
feelings that I shall much regret if my habitual indolence
can lose me such a friend. Your request in favor of the
Greeks will be hard to comply with. If I can be a
contributor in a humble way to their success by my exertions
here they shall not want them, but I fear the _angusta res
domi_ may press too heavily upon us to permit of an
effectual benevolence. If you wanted five hundred men six
feet high with sinewy arms and case hardened constitutions,
bold spirits and daring adventurers who would travel upon a
bushel of corn and a gallon of whiskey per man from the
extreme point of the world to Constantinople we could
furnish you with them, but I doubt whether they could raise
the money to pay their passage from the gut of Gibraltar
upwards. The effort however shall be made and if we can not
shew ourselves rich we will at least manifest our good will.
Though Greece touches few Yankee settlers thro the medium of
classical associations yet a people struggling to free
themselves from foreign bondage is sure to find warm hearts
in every native of the wilderness. We admire your noble
efforts and if we do not imitate you it is because our
purses are as empty as a Boetian's skull is thick. We know
so little of what is _really_ projecting in the cabinets of
Europe that we are obliged to believe implicitly in
newspaper reports, and we are perhaps foolish in hoping that
the Holy Alliance intends to take the Spanish part of the
New World under their protection. In such an event our
backwoodsmen would spring with the activity of squirrels to
the assistance of the regenerated Spaniards and perhaps
_there_ we might fight more effectually the battle for
universal Freedom than either at Thermopylae or Marathon.
There indeed we might strike a blow that would break up the
deep foundations of despotic power so as that neither art or
force could again collect and cement the scattered el