You ask what I think on the expediency of encouraging our states to be commercial? were I to indulge my own theory, I should with them to practice neither commerce nor navigation, but to stand with respect to Europe precisely on the footing of China. we should thus avoid wars, and all our...

the English are still our enemies ... the spirit existing there, and rising in America, has a very lowering aspect. to what events it may give birth, I cannot foresee. we are young, and can survive them; but their rotten machine must crush under the trial.

the Count de Moustier will find the affections of the Americans with France, but their habits with England. chained to that country by circumstances, embracing what they loathe, they realize the fable of the living & dead bound together.

of all the cankers of human happiness, none corrodes it with so silent, yet so baneful a tooth, as indolence. body & mind both unemployed, our being becomes a burthen, & every object about us loathsome, even the dearest. idleness begets ennui, ennui the hypochondria, & that a diseased...

Objects of attention for an American ... lighter mechanical arts and manufactures. some of these will be worth a superficial view. but circumstances rendering it impossible that America should become a manufacturing country during the time of any man now living, it would be a waste of attention...

I considered the British as our natural enemies, and as the only nation on earth who wished us ill from the bottom of their souls. and I am satisfied that were our continent to be swallowed up by the ocean, Great Britain would be in a bonfire from one end to the other.

a mind always employed is always happy. this is the true secret, the grand recipe for felicity. the idle are the only wretched. in a world which furnishes so many emploiments which are useful, & so many which are amusing, it is our own fault if we we ever know what ennui is, or if we are ever...

all the world is becoming commercial. was it practicable to keep our new empire separated from them we might indulge ourselves in speculating whether commerce contributes to the happiness of mankind. but we cannot separate ourselves from them. our citizens have had too full taste of the comforts...

the city of London, tho’ handsomer than Paris, is not so handsome as Philadelphia. their architecture is in the most wretched stile I ever saw, not meaning to except America where it is bad, nor even Virginia where it is worse than in any other part of America, which I have seen.

Your two last letters are those which have given me the greatest pleasure of any I ever recieved from you. The one announced that you were become a notable housewife, the other a mother. this last is undoubtedly the key-stone of the arch of matrimonial happiness, as the first is it’s daily aliment.