Addresses, Messages, And Replies
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Jefferson, Thomas
extent: 127063
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Eris Etext Project
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: 1
subject: states
subject: time
subject: country
subject: state
subject: peace
subject: citizens
subject: testimony
subject: esteem
subject: pleased
subject: honour
subject: return
subject: native
subject: fills
subject: gratitude
subject: pleasure
subject: jefferson
subject: thomas
subject: addresses
subject: messages
subject: replies
subject: american
subject: literature
type: text
local mirror: jefferson-addresses-253.txt
concordance: http://infomotions.com/alex/cgi-bin/concordance.pl
plain html: jefferson-addresses-253.htm
sort title: Addresses, Messages, And Replies
full text: ADDRESSES, MESSAGES, AND REPLIES by Thomas Jefferson _Response to the Citizens of Albemarle_ February 12, 1790 GENTLEMEN, The testimony of esteem with which you are pleased to honour my return to my native country fills me with gratitude and pleasure. While it shews that my absence has not lost me your friendly recollection, it holds out the comfortable hope that when the hour of retirement shall come, I shall again find myself amidst those with whom I have long lived, with whom I wish to live, and whose affection is the source of my purest happiness. Their favor was the door thro' which I was ushered on the stage of public life; and while I have been led on thro' it's varying scenes, I could not be unmindful of those who assigned me my first part. My feeble and obscure exertions in their service, and in the holy cause of freedom, have had no other merit than that they were my best. We have all the same. We have been fellow-labourers and fellow-sufferers, and heaven has rewarded us with a happy issue from our struggles. It rests now with ourselves alone to enjoy in peace and concord the blessings of self-government, so long denied to mankind: to shew by example the sufficiency of human reason for the care of human affairs and that the will of the majority, the Natural law of every society, is the only sure guardian of the rights of man. Perhaps even this my sometimes err. But it's errors are honest, solitary and short-lived. -- Let us then, my dear friends, for ever bow down to the general reason of the society. We are safe with that, even in it's deviations, for it soon returns again to the right way. These are lessons we have learnt together. We have prospered in their practice, and the liberality with which you are pleased to approve my attachment to the general rights of mankind assures me we are still together in these it's kindred sentiments. Wherever I may be stationed, by the will of my country, it will be my delight to see, in the general tide of happiness,…