Page:Life And Letters Of Thomas Jefferson -- Hirst (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.89541).pdf/499

Rh our peace with the civilized world, preserved through a season of uncommon difficulty and trial; the good will cultivated with the unfortunate aborigines of our country, and the civilization humanely extended among them; the lesson taught the inhabitants of the coast of Barbary, that we have the means of chastising their piratical encroachments, and awing them into justice; and that theme, which, above all others, the historic genius will hang upon with rapture, the liberty of speech and the press preserved inviolate, without which genius and science are given to man in vain.

"In the principles on which you have administered the government, we see only the continuation and maturity of the same virtues and abilities which drew upon you in your youth the resentment of Dunmore. From the first brilliant and happy moment of your resistance to foreign tyranny until the present day, we mark with pleasure and with gratitude the same uniform and consistent character the same warm and devoted attachment to liberty and the Republic, the same Roman love of your country, her rights, her peace, her honour, her prosperity."

The language of rhetoric is not always the language of truth. But never has a ruler better merited the gratitude of his countrymen; and on this occasion at least democracy, often fickle in its favours and inconstant in its affections, rewarded a faithful champion with every tribute of gratitude, honour, and esteem as he stepped with quiet dignity from the public stage to rejoin his neighbours at Charlottesville.