Considering that I had not been to Bedford for a twelvemonth before, I thought myself singularly unfortunate in so timing my journey, as to have been absent exactly at the moment of your late visit to our neighborhood.  The loss, indeed, was all my own; for in these short interviews with you.  I generally get my political compass rectified, learn from you whereabouts we are, and correct my course again.  In exchange for this, I can give you but newspaper ideas, and little indeed of these, for I read but a single paper, and that hastily.  I find Horace and Tacitus so much better writers than the champions of the gazettes, that I lay those down, to take up these, with great reluctance.  And on the question you propose, whether we can, in any form, take a bolder attitude than formerly in favor of liberty, I can give you but commonplace ideas.  They will be but the widow’s mite, and offered only because requested.  The matter which now embroils Europe, the presumption of dictating to an independent nation the form of its government, is so arrogant, so atrocious, that indignation, as well as moral sentiment, enlists all our partialities and prayers in favor of one, and our equal execrations against the other.  I do not know, indeed, whether all nations do not owe to one another a bold and open declaration of their sympathies with the one party, and their detestation of the conduct of the other.  But farther than this we are not bound to go; and indeed, for the sake of the world, we ought not to increase the jealousies, or draw on ourselves the power, of this formidable confederacy.  I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States, never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe.  Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours.  Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us.  They are nations of eternal war.  All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their people.  On our part, never had a people so favorable a chance of trying the opposite system, of peace and fraternity with mankind, and the direction of all our means and faculties to the purposes of improvement instead of destruction.  With Europe we have few occasions of collision, and these, with a little prudence and forbearance, may be generally accommodated.  Of the brethren of our own hemisphere, none are yet, or for an age to come will be, in a shape, condition, or disposition to war against us.  And the foothold, which the nations of Europe had in either America, is slipping from under them, so that we shall soon be rid of their neighborhood.  Cuba alone seems at present to hold up a speck of war to us.  Its possession by Great Britain would indeed be a great calamity to us.  Could we induce her to join us in guarantying its independence against all the world, except Spain, it would be nearly as valuable to us as if it were our own.  But should she take