The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 8 (of 9) / Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private

by Thomas Jefferson

TO THE REPUBLICAN MECHANICS OF THE TOWN OF LEESBURG AND ITS VICINITY, ASSEMBLED ON THE 27TH OF FEBRUARY LAST.

Monticello, March 29, 1809.

The receipt of your kind address in the last moments of the session of Congress, will, I trust, offer a just apology for its late acknowledgment.

Your friendly salutations on the close of my public life, and approbation of the motives which dictated my retirement, are received with great satisfaction.

That there should be a contrariety of opinions respecting the public agents and their measures, and more especially respecting that which recently suspended our commerce and produced temporary privations, is ever to be expected among free men; and I am happy to find you are in the number of those who are satisfied that the course pursued was marked out by our country's interest, and called for by her dearest rights. While the principles of our constitution give just latitude to inquiry, every citizen faithful to it will, with you, deem embodied expressions of discontent, and open outrages of law and patriotism, as dishonorable as they are injurious; and there is reason to believe that had the efforts of the government against the innovations and tyranny of the belligerent powers been unopposed among ourselves, they would have been more effectual towards the establishment of our rights.

Unconscious of partiality between the different callings of my fellow citizens, I trust that a fair review of my attention to the interests of commerce in particular, in every station of my political life, will afford sufficient proofs of my just estimation of its importance in the social system. What has produced our present difficulties, and what will have produced the impending war, if that is to be our lot? Our efforts to save the rights of commerce and navigation. From these, solely and exclusively, the whole of our present dangers flow.

With just reprobations of the resistance made or menaced against the laws of our country, I applaud your patriotic resolution to meet hostility to them with the energy and dignity of freemen; and thankful for your solicitude for my health and happiness, I salute you with affectionate sentiments of respect.