Dr Franklin, the greatest man & ornament of the age and country in which he lived.

Hamilton is ill of the fever as is said. he had two physicians out at his house the night before last. his family think him in danger, & he puts himself so by his excessive alarm. he had been miserable several days before from a firm persuasion he should catch it. a man as timid as he is on...

my present course of life admits less reading than I wish. from breakfast, or noon at latest, to dinner, I am mostly on horseback, attending to my farms or other concerns, which I find healthful to my body, mind, & affairs: and the few hours I can pass in my cabinet, are devoured by...

I have the same good opinion of mr Adams which I ever had. I know him to be an honest man, an able one with his pen, and he was a powerful advocate on the floor of Congress. he has been alienated from me by belief in the wretched forgeries lying suggestions, contrived for electioneering purposes,...

I think it a part of his character to suspect foul play in those of whom he is jealous, and not easily to relinquish his suspicions.

I shall be happy to receive your corrections of these ideas as I have found in the course of our joint services that I think right when I think with you.

our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing every thing rational in moral philosophy which Greece & Rome have left us. Epictetus indeed has given us what was good of the Stoics; all beyond, of their doctrines dogmas, being hypocrisy and...

we could, in the United States make as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe: not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good. yet I have ever observed to my countrymen who think it’s introduction important, that a labourer cultivating wheat, rice, tobacco or cotton here, will be...

the mortality among our negroes is still more serious as involving moral as well as interested considerations. I have had n they are well fed, and well clothed, & I have had no reason to believe that any overseer, since Griffin’s time, has over worked them. accordingly the deaths among the...