To secure respect to a neutral flag requires a naval force organized and ready to vindicate it from insult or aggression.

I shall make it the most agreeable part of my duty to study merit, and reward the brave and deserving.

I only wish, while I am a servant of the public, to know the will of my masters, that I may govern my self accordingly.

I regret exceedingly that the disputes between the protestants and Roman Catholics should be carried to the serious alarming height mentioned in your letters. Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause; and I was not without hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy of the present age would have put an effectual stop to contentions of this kind.

All I am I owe to my mother.

The tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism which adorn the characters selected to devise and adopt them. In these honorable qualifications, I behold the surest pledges, that as on one side, no local prejudices, or attachments; no seperate views, nor party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye which ought to watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests: so, on another, that the foundations of our National policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality...

May Heaven to this Union continue its beneficence