ttention sometimes to this subject.
I would be understood to mean I cannot avoid reflecting with pleasure on
the probable influence that commerce may hereafter have on human manners
and society in general. On these occasions I consider how mankind may be
connected like this one great family of fraternal ties. I indulge a
fond, perhaps an enthusiastic idea, that as the world is evidently much
less barbarous than it has been, its melioration must still be
progressive; that nations are becoming more humanized in their policy,
that the subjects of ambition and causes for hostility are daily
diminishing, and in fine, that the period is not very remote when the
benefits of a liberal and free commerce will pretty generally succeed to
the devastations and horrors of war.

"Men's minds are as varied as their faces, and where the motives to
their actions are pure, the operation of the former is no more to be
imputed to them as a crime than the appearance of the latter; for both
being the work of nature, are equally unavoidable. Liberality and
charity, instead of clamor and misrepresentation, which latter only
serve to foment the passions without enlightening the understanding,
ought to govern in all disputes about matters of importance."

_From a Letter, 1793_

"If it can be esteemed a happiness to live in an age productive of great
and interesting events, we of the present age are very highly favored.
The rapidity of national revolutions appears no less astonishing than
their magnitude. In what they will terminate is known only to the Great
Ruler of events; and confiding in His wisdom and goodness, we may safely
trust the issue to Him, without perplexing ourselves to seek for that
which is beyond human ken, only taking care to perform the parts
assigned to us in a way that reason and our own conscience approve."

_From a Speech to Both Houses of Congress, 1790_

"To administer justice to and receive it from every power with whom they
are connected will, I hope, be always found the prominent feature in the
administration of this country; and I flatter myself that nothing short
of imperious necessity can occasion a breach with any of them.

"Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. In
one of which the measures of government receive their impression so
immediately from the sense of the community as in ours, it is
proportionably essential. To the security of a free constitution it
contributes in vari