the selfish spirit of commerce, which knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.

An equilibrium of agriculture, manufactures & commerce is certainly become essential to our independance.

I avail myself of this occasion of returning sincere thanks for the kind dispositions towards myself expressed in your letter, and for the sentiments, which it conveys, of approbation of my conduct in the administration of the public affairs. if that conduct has met the general approbation of my...

I shall give over reading newspapers. they are so false & so intemperate that they disturb tranquility without giving information.

the station which we occupy among the nations of the earth ... the only monument of human rights, & the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom & self-government

all these concerns I am now leaving to be settled by my friend mr Madison. within a few days I retire to my family, my books, & farms & having gained the harbor myself, I shall look on my friends still buffeting the storm, with anxiety indeed, but not with envy. never did prisoner,...

aware of the tendency of power to degenerate into abuse, the worthies of our own country have secured it’s independence by the establishment of a constitution & form of Government for our nation calculated to prevent as well as to correct abuse.

I shall retire into the bosom of my native state, endeared to me by every tie which can attach the human heart.

No provision in our constitution ought to be dearer to man, than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprizes of the civil authority.

it was one of the rules which above all others made Doctr Franklin the most amiable of men in society, ‘never to contradict any body.’