the cotton, hemp, and flax,
which we raise ourselves. For fine stuff we shall depend on your
northern manufactories. Of these, that is to say, of company
establishments, we have none. We use little machinery. The spinning
jenny, and loom with the flying shuttle, can be managed in a family; but
nothing more complicated. The economy and thriftiness resulting from
our household manufactures are such that they will never again be laid
aside; and nothing more salutary for us has ever happened than the
British obstructions to our demands for their manufactures. Restore free
intercourse when they will, their commerce with us will have totally
changed its form, and the articles we shall in future want from them
will not exceed their own consumption of our produce.

A letter from you calls up recollections very dear to my mind. It
carries me back to the times when, beset with difficulties and dangers,
we were fellow-laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most
valuable to man, his right of self-government. Laboring always at the
same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us, and yet
passing harmless under our bark, we knew not how, we rode through the
storm with heart and hand, and made a happy port. Still we did not
expect to be without rubs and difficulties; and we have had them. First
the detention of the western posts: then the coalition of Pilnitz,
outlawing our commerce with France, and the British enforcement of the
outlawry. In your day, French depredations: in mine, English, and the
Berlin and Milan decrees: now, the English orders of council, and
the piracies they authorize. When these shall be over, it will be the
impressment of our seamen, or something else: and so we have gone on,
and so we shall go on, puzzled and prospering beyond example in
the history of man. And I do believe we shall continue to growl, to
multiply, and prosper, until we exhibit an association, powerful, wise,
and happy, beyond what has yet been seen by men. As for France and
England, with all their pre-eminence in science, the one is a den of
robbers, and the other of pirates. And if science produces no better
fruits than tyranny, murder, rapine, and destitution of national
morality, I would rather wish our country to be ignorant, honest,
and estimable, as our neighboring savages are. But whither is senile
garrulity leading me? Into politics, of which I have taken final leave.
I think little of them, and say less.