[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore . . . never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.

To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood.

I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make.

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution.

If anything pass in a religious meeting seditiously and contrary to the public peace, let it be punished in the same manner and no otherwise than as if it had happened in a fair or market.

I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.