SIR,-Your letter of February the 18th came to hand on the 1st instant; and the request of the history of my physical habits would have puzzled me not a little, had it not been for the model with which you accompanied it, of Doctor Rush's answer to a similar inquiry. I live so much like other people, that I might refer to ordinary life as a history of my own. Like my friend the Doctor, I have lived temperately, eating very little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principle diet.

My most earnest wish is to see the republican element of popular control pushed to the maximum of its practicable exercise. I shall then believe that our government may be pure and perpetual.

[T]o preserve the republican form and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that [the Constitution] has established . . . are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering.

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood.

The variety of opinions leads to questions. Questions lead to truth.

I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.