11, 1831._ MY DEAR SIR,--I return you my most sincere thanks for your kind letter of the 2nd inst., and though you have not been successful in your application to the Belgian authorities in my behalf, I know full well that you did your utmost, and am only sorry that at my instigation you attempted an impossibility.
The Belgians seem either not to know or not to care for the opinion of the great Cyrus, who gives this advice to his captains: 'Take no heed from what countries ye fill up your ranks, but seek recruits as ye do horses, not those particularly who are of your own country, but those of merit.' The Belgians will only have such recruits as are born in Belgium, and when we consider the _heroic_ manner in which the native Belgian army defended the person of their new sovereign in the last conflict with the Dutch, can we blame them for their determination?
It is rather singular, however, that, resolved as they are to be served only by themselves, they should have sent for 50,000 Frenchmen to clear their country of a handful of Hollanders, who have generally been considered the most unwarlike people in Europe, but who, if they had had fair play given them, would long ere this time have replanted the Orange flag on the towers of Brussels, and made the Belgians what they deserve to be--hewers of wood and drawers of water.
And now, my dear Sir, allow me to reply to a very important part of your letter.

You ask me whether I wish to purchase a commission in the British Service, because in that case you would speak to the Secretary at War about me.

I must inform you, therefore, that my name has been for several years upon the list _for the purchase_ of a commission, and I have never yet had sufficient interest to procure an appointment.

If I can do nothing better I shall be very glad to purchase; but I will pause two or three months before I call upon you to fulfil your kind promise.

It is believed that the militias will be embodied in order to be sent to that unhappy country Ireland, and, provided I can obtain a commission in one of them and they are kept in service, it would be better than spending L500 upon one in the line.