my first wish is a restoration of our just rights

I am sincerely one of those, & would rather be in dependance on Gr. Br. properly limited than on any nation upon earth, or than on no nation. but I am one of those too who rather than submit to the right of legislating for us assumed by the British parl. & which late experience has shewn...

I am sorry the situation of our country should render it not eligible to you to remain longer in it. I hope the returning wisdom of Gr. Br. will e’er long put an end to this unnatural contest.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. [Query XVIII, “Manners”]

But is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance? Is it government? Is this the kind of protection we receive in return for the rights we give up? Besides, the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may...

Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. ... Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves. [Query XVII, “Religion”]

Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made ... will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the...

Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more...

we might shew that America, though but a child of yesterday, has already given hopeful proofs of genius, as well of the nobler kinds which arouse the best feelings of man, which call him into action, which substantiate his freedom, and conduct him to happines [Query VI, “Productions Mineral,...

The Natural bridge, the most sublime of Nature’s works ... so beautiful an arch, so elevated, so light, and springing as it were up to heaven, the rapture of the spectator is really indescribable! [Query V, “Cascades”]