"MY DEAR SIR,--A few days since I received a note from your brother requesting me to call and see him, and I was distressed to find that in the short interval since I had last met him his health had become so dangerously worse. He is anxious to obtain a consulship or some other place which will give him the benefit of a climate better adapted to a chronic pulmonary disease, and a reasonable support while subjecting himself to its remedial influence. I need not say I felt a strong sympathy for him; but I feel some disability for rendering him useful aid, which I will in part explain and which he and you will appreciate. Although he sustained the Democratic ticket at the late general election, and did service which I understand has been handsomely recognized by the President, his course was so little conspicuous that the impression left by his association with former events will naturally predominate in the minds of the party generals. If, therefore, the administration should regard the case in the light of mere party expediency, I do not think I could in candor towards them say what would be of much avail to him; especially as caution in my expressions being the more necessary lest I should expose myself to be quoted not merely as offering a particular instance in regard to which I should have no hesitation if it stood alone, but as contributing to and thus sanctioning a general distinction of local patronage which is objected to, in part on the same ground on which this might be exposed to unfriendly criticism, and which has prevailed here in the lesser appointments which most interest the mass of the party to an extent that excites very great dissatisfaction. Nor does it seem to me that formal recommendations can at all benefit your brother, nor anything which I might say in his behalf, unless the administration desired affirmatively to do something for him. If such be their real feeling--if they regard his case as one to be controlled by liberal considerations, if they recognize the strong appeal it makes to their humanity, and if they are nevertheless restrained by solicitude as to how the appointment would be received by their political friends here--it is possible that I may be of some little service to him, in the only contingency in which it seems to me any service can be efficient. The object of my letter is to assure you that if the administration take favorable views of the matter, as I hope and trust they may, I shall be ready to do what I can to cause the appointment to be well received by the party here; and that such, I believe, will be the general disposition of those of our friends to whom the circumstances are made known. The only hesitation I have in saying this is lest it may be assuming in me; but if you think it will do your brother any good, you may communicate it for that purpose. I did not venture to write to anybody other than yourself lest, in my ignorance