Cork, Ireland,

Feb. 22, 1848.

My Dear Sir:ーYour welcome remembrance of us is noted by the numbers of your paper. It is very pleasant to be able to convey what is considered the most intangible thing, the mind of man, in as tangible a manner as by reading the thoughts.

You know that some of us here are Whig Radicals, and have always looked with the kindliest sympathies at your Republican institutions. The Whig-Radical school look upon a Queen as Presidentess of the Empire, and do not much discuss the elective or hereditary succession. They know that the British is what may be called in practice a monarchical republic, or a republicanized monarchy, and of course they look to America with respect and fellow-feeling. At times, however, doubts arise here whether a practical commonwealth is as fully worked out across the Atlantic as the sincere friends of onward progress could wish. What concern have strangers with America? Every concern.ーAmerica made her declaration of liberty; she compiled her States constitutions; the western winds speak her voice and detail her acts to all Europe; she has been made a city placed on a hill; her responsibility to an observant world is solemn; everywhere States are struggling to be free; it is not in Roman history that Italy should now examine the workings of Republican institutions; that records what is old and pagan: it is to America modern republicans look. She is modern and Christian. Let her beware, then. A dying mother whispered with energy in the ear of her nearest relative, "Do nothing wrong! If you do, that boy will imitate you." The British are America's nearest relative. Language, habits, general morals, freedom in religion, and many noble links, make the wide waters a slight separation.ーWe do not feel ourselves decaying, yet with the solemnity which life or death cannot increase, we call on America to "do nothing wrong." The young States of the world, now bounding into freedom, are the boy-nations, who may imitate America if she does wrong. Let her look to herself, therefore, and speedily become the example of a struggling world. Has the great western republic no absolutism to subdue at home? Can she endure slavery within her borders much longer? I call on every true-hearted republican to turn the "Declaration of Independence" with its face to the wall, so long as American citizens of ANY blood are not freemen. This is America's primal stain ー it is blood on her escutcheon; and while it remains darkly on its surface, she cannot boldly show it to the face of day, nor expect it to strike terror into tyrannous rulers in other hemispheres.

The "avarice of territory," like the avarice of individual power, is a snare.ーNapoleon prostrated tyranny after tyranny, but [t]he lust of empire prostrated the leveller of imperial dynasties. England, as a nation, is kept impoverished by her too extensive empire. The amount of beggary and civil war which distresses Ireland, is caused by a reckless appetite for territorial aggrandizement, which prostrates and enfeebles their gentry. They are like the people who are said to have a wolf in their stomach; they have a morbid rapacity which too much cannot satisfy. On this destructive spirit of monopoly the peasants have made a guerilla war, and we are in confusion and distress. Let America beware of unpaid for territoryーTexas, Mexico. The common weal of the republic is pawned to buy these States: and what does America want of them? In your countryman's homely but applicable expression, let her take care she does not "pay too much for her whistle." Our national debt and our enslaving taxes, are the tribute to inordinate appetite for territory. Canada is a heavy loss to the British Empire, and it would be hard to find a state that Britannia rules, and which is large enough to take itself in charge, which would not derive advantage from being "let alone" by England. She purchases all her dependencies too dearly.ーThey are indeed mostly dependencies in the strict sense, for England subsidizes them all, while she paralyzes them with her control as well as her money. The vehement prayer of Montgomery to England, may also be addressed to America. Do you want to adopt the prostrating vices of the old European States?

"Beware,
For wealth is a phantom, and empire a snare.
O let not thy birth-right be sold,
For reprobate glory and gold.
Thy distant dominions like wild graftings shootー
They weigh down thy trunksーthey will tear up thy
root.
Let ambition, the sin of the brave,
And avarice, the soul of the slave,
No longer seduce your affections to roam
From Liberty, Justice, Religion, at home."

You Americans are a proud people. The criticisms of travellers on your habits and manners provoke you. Contradict them by your acts. You once won a glorious nameーkeep it; or if it is sullied in any point eradicate the stain. Have courage to be great, and bid all freemen again look to the glorious home of liberty, the trans-Atlantic west.

Yours sincerely,

RICHARD DOWDEN RICHARD.