I hope this will find you...enjoying the commencement of a new year with every prospect that can make it a happy one.

Reason, on the contrary, assures us, that as in so great a number, a fit representative would be most likely to be found, so the choice would be less likely to be diverted from him, by the intrigues of the ambitious, or the bribes of the rich.

Resistance to tyranny is service to God.

[Regarding legislative assemblies,] the number ought at most to be kept within a certain limit, in order to avoid the confusion and intemperance of a multitude. In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.

If justice, good faith, honor, gratitude and all the other qualities which enoble the character of a nation, and fulfill the ends of Government be the fruits of our establishments, the cause of liberty will acquire a dignity and lustre, which it has never yet enjoyed, and an example will be set, which can not but have the most favorable influence on the rights of Mankind.

There never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them.

In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the disease incident to republican government.