some men are born for the public. nature by fitting them for the service of the human race on a broad scale, has stamped them with the evidences of her destination & their duty

still one thing more, fellow citizens. a wise & frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, & shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. this is the...

Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high minded to endure the degradations of the others, possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation, entertaining a due sense...

error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it.

every difference of opinion, is not a difference of principle. we have called by different names brethren of the same principle. we are all republicans: we are all federalists.

All too will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. during the whole of the last war, which was trying enough, I never deserted a friend because he had taken an opposite side; and those of my own state who joined the British...

during the ensuing summer came on the war-fever. those who caught it seemed to consider every man as their personal enemy who would not catch their disorder, and many suffered themselves to think it was a sufficient cause for breaking off society with them.

I have one of the Scotch threshing machines nearly finished. it is copied exactly from a model mr Pinckney sent me, only that I have put the whole works (except the horse wheel) into a single frame moveable from one field to another on the two axles of a waggon.

political conversation I really dislike, & therefore avoid where I can without affectation. but when urged by others, I have never concieved that having been in public life requires me to bely my sentiments, nor even to conceal them. when I am led by conversation to express them, I do it with...