Liverpool, December 20, 1847.

Americans and countrymen!—Farewell! I have been exiled from your soil for cherishing the inalienable rights of man. The principles of liberty and heaven-born truth have been the exclusive cause of the lawless banishment of thousands, of which number I am one. My wife and worthy brother have fallen victims to this cruel violation of constitutional rights. For nearly two years my six motherless children, between the tender ages of six and fifteen, have been inhumanly forced into the solitary wilderness—nine months of the time dwelling in a tent, and the remainder in a floorless log-cabin—often without flour, meal, or meat, and surrounded by savages of the fiercest tribes. From easy competence reduced to want, banishment, and the severest inclemencies of a northern climate! This is a faint outline of the picture of tens of thousands who have fallen victims to the unprovoked cruelty of an ungrateful country!

My honoured father, at the age of eighteen, mustered into his country's service, under the united command of Generals Washington and Lafayette, and was a youthful soldier at the siege of Yorktown, in the capture of Lord Cornwallis. My grandsire was bankrupted of thousands of dollars, held in promissory notes against the Continental government, which the great expense of the war of revolutionary freedom disqualified them ever to pay. My mother's sire was mustered among the superanuated veteran soldiers at the siege and capture of General Burgoyne.

Of myself: many of my early associates are in the highest legislatures of the nation, and among the roost distinguished citizens of the desk and bar. To them, and to my countrymen at large, I offer this farewell, and this monitory counsel. Americans! your sympathy for Greece, and your liberality to Ireland, and your response to the liberal efforts of the Pope, are relieved by a sad counter-check of cruel indifference and bigoted violence to your best, most peaceful, and industrious citizens at home. The shades of Washington, Henry, and Adams are ready to burst their tombs with burning indignation, at the contempt cast upon the sacred principles of liberty which they fought to establish. The lofty scorn manifested towards the outraged innocence of your suffering countrymen, cannot escape the pity and rebuke of all patriots and freemen. By such foul deeds of inhumanity your country is mortgaged and ready to be sold. The day of final redemption will soon be passed, except a vigorous and mighty effort is made to roll back the crimson tide of lawless misrule and popular outbreak.

Before our people experienced their sad disasters in the state of Illinois, they took the timely precaution, dictated by the force of alarming circumstances, to forewarn every governor of the several States, and many other distinguished citizens, of the necessity of timely succour from our countrymen and rulers. Our property, liberty, and lives were in danger from systematic organization of rapacious and blood-thirsty citizens of Illinois and Missouri. The stormy clouds, which we distinctly foresaw were ready to burst in desolating fury upon our innocent heads, were distinctly pointed out to the nation. We respectfully petitioned for an asylum, in any one of the States that would grant us this boon of protection and citizenship, for which our fathers had fought and bled in the war of independence. Our petitions were barely answered, and coolly slighted. We were accounted as a people too clannish, like the ancient Hebrews, and too peculiar and exclusive, like the apostles of Palestine.

We had no alternative but to commend ourselves to the God of the oppressed, and take precipitate refuge, in the dead of winter, in the wild valleys of the mountains. To the God of justice, and the great Arbiter of the destinies of nations, we look to avenge our wrongs, and chasten the nation that has been deaf to the voice of her suffering and loyal citizens. He will hear our cries and avenge our wrongs. The time has come to set judgment to the line and righteousness to the plummet. The last and noblest experiment of popular self-government, and uninspired worship, has been tried in the young and giant Republic of America! The eagle of liberty has fled to the mountains, and there perched aloft to behold the desolation of nations. Proud and enterprising nation! out-stripping all other nations in lofty bearing and onward progress, your foot has stumbled in a hand's breadth of the prize! Angels might weep at the spectacle of so sudden a fall; but God is just, and the nation that will not serve Him shall be brought low.

You are weighed in the balances, and from henceforth, until you break the rod of the oppressor and redress the wrongs of the injured, your councils will be distracted, and your greatest chieftains will be at variance. Hand to hand, and toe to toe, every one against his fellow—your struggles will be sanguinary and obstinate. The people whom you have trodden down in your pride, and banished by tumultuous acts of violence, though comparatively few and but partially known, happen to be the choice ones of all the earth and the favourites of heaven. Their cause is espoused in the courts of the Lord of Hosts, even the God of all the earth. Other people, in different ages, have suffered as much, or even more than this people, but the time of recompenses had not come. The time to end all controversy, and establish a government that all nations could safely confide in, had not come. It has now come. The land of Columbus, and the promised land of Joseph, must be cleared of the briars and thorns, in order to make room for the upright of all nations to assemble themselves together, and enjoy a government of peace for a thousand years.

To the mountains, oh ye who would escape the convulsive throes of a perplexed nation, and the indignant blasts of the Almighty, in these years of "recompenses!" "Come out of her my people!" Patriots of America—friends of peace—advocates of justice! all ye that fear God and tremble at his word, separate yourselves from the tents of wickedness, and flee to the strongholds of Zion. For the day of the Lord cometh that will burn as an oven. The Lord reigns in the heights of Zion. From thence his voice will go forth as in days of old, when Sinai quaked under his feet. He will plead with all flesh. He is risen up as a strong man to run a race, or as one that is full of wine. The seeming insignificance of the Saints may tend to conceal the Almighty arm that is about to be made bare, not merely to redress their wrongs, but to humble all flesh. The light of your priesthood thickens the darkness and gloom that overhang the nation, and their efforts minister a soporific that renders the necks of your countrymen passive to the executioner's axe.

Descendants of Washington and Franklin! is there no hope? Must the best constitution, ever given to any uninspired nation, be made the sport of traitors and demagogues? Must the loftiest efforts at freedom and splendid nationality he crushed by a perplexing concentration of every thing humiliating to national pride and human ambition? Must the sons of venerated puritans so soon be covered with the inglorious gore of assassinations and belligerent carnage? Must thy cities be laid waste, whose lofty spires rival the mountain-tops, in courting the earliest sunbeams of the morning? Must thy daughters, the fairest workmanship of their Maker, be given to rapine and violence, when the eye of pity is turned away, and the aegis of angelic guardianship is reluctantly withdrawn? Except you bind up the broken in heart, and make restitution for robbery and rapine, and unprovoked banishment of loyal citizens, who poured out their blood as water at the voice of your governors and the mandates of your laws,—the vials of wo are in store for your unhappy country! No intercessor can stay the blast of divine indignation when the Almighty rises up to make inquisition for blood. The Most High solemnly interdicted any man to show mercy to Canaan when the cup of her iniquity was full. Jerusalem, the queen of cities! whose Temple was the pride and admiration of nations, having rejected the Saints, was made a heap of ruins under the curse of heaven.

Yet there is hope for America: let her senators teach wisdom, and her officers exact righteousness, and undo the heavy burdens, and redress the wrongs of her banished. Then the fruitful field shall not become barren, nor every man's hand be turned against his fellow; and the voice of mirth shall supersede the voice of mourning.

Land of my birth, and home of my fathers! my earliest impressions were devoted to your praise and glory. In my riper years I have never infringed your laws or quenched the spirit of your philanthropy. You have robbed me of my houses, and my farms, and martyred my dearest friends, and stripped me of reputation, and expelled me from your borders, without the shadow of impeachment, or of trial by jury. Contrary to my strongest predilections and educational attachments, you have sought to eradicate every vestige of my patriotism, and render frigid my warmest love to everything that endeared me to the friends and citizens of the country that was ever my pride and boast! My heart still yearns fondly over the land that was marked out in the council of Heaven to be the nursery of freedom, enterprise, and genius. And now, as I recede from your borders, and from the scenes of my toils and fond attachments with my desolate family, through extensive wilds to the mountains for safety and a home, my heart overflows and bursts with the sentiment—"Oh, that thou hadst known in this thy day the things that belong to thy peace!" In the meridian of life I go from the tombs of my fathers to build and plant, where the eagle of liberty soars aloft in the sunbeams of truth! My associates are called, and tried, and chosen; they are the virtuous and honourable of all the earth; the refuse of all nations, but accepted of God and escorted by his angels. Their bosoms beat high with every noble impulse of philanthropy and virtue; they are a magnanimous people, fitted to foster and garner up the scattered virtues of the human family, and open up a safe asylum to the oppressed of all nations; they have stood in the Thermopylae, and passed the Rubicon. The Roman Mutius could deliberately burn his hand to cinders as a token of the courage of his companions; so this people have proved, indisputably, that they possess all the elements of endurance and triumph. Their most arduous and perilous conflict is passed; and millions comforted, enlightened, and redeemed will reap the reward, and enter into their labours. They are worthy. They have paid the last debt which the angel informed John must be liquidated in the blood of latter-day prophets, when the just could be avenged. Judgment is given unto them, and the richest benedictions of Heaven now await in Zion the upright and noble of all nations.

With sentiments of pure benevolence, I subscribe myself

Your exiled friend and humble servant,

ORSON SPENCER.