Callao Roads, 7th Aug. 1821.
MY DEAR GENERAL,

I address you for the last time under your late designation,
being aware that the liberty I may take as a friend might
not be deemed decorous to you under the title of "Protector," for I
shall not with a gentleman of your understanding take into account,
as a motive for abstaining to speak truth, any chance of your
resentment. Nay, were I certain that such would be the effect of this
letter, I would nevertheless perform such an act of friendship, in
repayment of the support you gave me at a time when the basest
plots and plans were laid for my dismissal from the Chilian Service,
for no other reason than that certain influential persons of shallow
understanding and petty expedients hate those who despise mean
acts accomplished by low cunning.

Permit me, my dear General, to give you the experience of
eleven years during which I sat in the first senate in the world,
and to say what I anticipate on the one hand, and what I fear
on the other, nay, what I foresee; for that which is to come, in
regard to the acts of Governments and Nations, may as certainly
be predicted from history, as the revolutions of the solar system.
You have it in your power to be the Napoleon of South America,
as you have it in your power to be one of the greatest men now
acting on the theatre of the world; but you have also the power
to choose your course, and if the first steps are false, the eminence
on which you stand will, as though from the brink of a precipice,
make your fall the more heavy and the more certain.