y expence, to get rid
of that disgrace. Is it not enough that I suffer imprisonment, but my
mind also must be wounded and tortured with subjects of this kind? Did I
reason from personal considerations only, independent of principles and
the pride of having practiced those principles honourably, I should be
tempted to curse the day I knew America. By contributing to her liberty
I have lost my own, and yet her Government beholds my situation in
silence. Wonder not, Sir, at the ideas I express or the language in
which I express them. If I have a heart to feel for others I can feel
also for myself, and if I have anxiety for my own honour, I have it also
for a country whose suffering infancy I endeavoured to nourish and
to which I have been enthusiastically attached. As to patience I have
practiced it long--as long as it was honorable to do so, and when it
goes beyond that point it becomes meanness.

I am inclined to believe that you have attended to my imprisonment
more as a friend than as a Minister. As a friend I thank you for your
affectionate attachment. As a Minister you have to look beyond me to the
honour and reputation of your Government; and your Countrymen, who have
accustomed themselves to consider any subject in one line of thinking
only, more especially if it makes a strong [impression] upon them, as
I believe my situation has made upon you, do not immediately see the
matters that have relation to it in another line; and it is to bring
these two into one point that I offer you these observations. A citizen
and his country, in a case like mine, are so closely connected that the
case of one is the case of both.

When you first arrived the path you had to pursue with respect to my
liberation was simple. I was imprisoned as a foreigner; you knew that
foreigner to be a citizen of America, and you knew also his character,
and as such you should immediately have reclaimed him. You could lose
nothing by taking strong ground, but you might lose much by taking an
inferior one; but instead of this, which I conceive would have been the
right line of acting, you left me in their hands on the loose intimation
that my liberation would take place without your direct interference,
and you strongly recommended it to me to wait the issue. This is more
than seven weeks ago and I am still in prison. I suspect these people
are trifling with you, and if they once believe they can do that, you
will not easily get any business done ex