Autograph letter signed : New York, to William Gifford, 1880 April 16.

Concerning his departure from America and his thoughts on what he will do in London; saying "The ungrateful villains have not exhausted either my purse or my spirits; I shall yet carry off a few hundreds of pounds, and shall sail out of their harbour in triumph. I am resolved, be the consequences what it may, to fight them to the water's edge; they may, probably, capture any baggage, but they shall not take my standard. What I shall follow, when I get to London, is another question. Some kind of business, however, (probably bookselling), I am resolved on; for I love my family too well to think of placing their dependence for support on the feeble labours of my pen. I had, at one time, the hope of being able to make as much money in America as would have been a decent competence for my children; but the republicans have put my property in a state of requisition, and I must therefore seek for more elsewhere. I am far from desponding. I never remember the time when I was in what is called low spirits, except when the mutiny was in the British fleet. I have a long and a good list of subscribers to my works, and I will not yet despair of attaining to the height of my ambition: a snug little cottage, a horse and chair for my wife, and a brace of pointers for myself. --We have all some hobby-horse...I know I am capable of a good deal of business, and that I shall chearfully encounter ten years toil. I also know, that where person and property are under the safe-guard of the law, steady industry, with order, frugality, and honesty, seldom fail of producing competence, not to say wealth. Great, however, as this object is; great as it must be with every husband and father, who is worthy of those tender names, I do not know that its magnitude [illegible] another that I have in view; to wit: to eradicate from the minds of my countrymen all hankering after the captivating curse of republicanism. The name of patriot is become discordant to my ears; but, to effect this object completely, I would chearfully forego every comfort of life, and, were my wife and children exempt from my lot, would contentedly end my days in a work-house. I see, in a note of the Unsex'd Females, an American copy of which I do myself the honour to send you, that we may still live in hopes of your version of Juvenal; but when our wishes are to be gratified is another thing. I only beseech you to recollect the parable of the talents;" describing the attributes of the young man who will succeed him in New York and saying "Being a native American, he will be able to live, with little danger, in times that would send me mangled to the grave;" adding that with this letter he puts "...an end to our correspondence across the sea."