Virginia Argus

[The following is Mr. Jefferson's Answer to the Address from the Legislature of Vermont, published in our paper in December last.]
To the Gen. Assembly of the state of Vermont.
I join you, fellow-citizens, in grateful acknowledgments to the Ruler of the Universe, for the prosperous situation of our common country, its rapid increase of wealth and population, and our secure and uninterrupted enjoyment of life, liberty & property. He conducted our fathers to this chosen land, he has maintained us in it, in prosperity and safety, and has opened the hearts of the nations, civilized and savage, to yield to us enlargement of territory, as we have increased in numbers, to fill it with the blessings of peace, freedom and self government. It must be a great solace to every virtuous mind, that the countries lately acquired, are for equivalents honestly paid, and come to us unstained with blood.
Sensible as we are of the superior advantages of civil life, of the nourishment which industry provides for the body, and science for the mind and morals, it is our duty to associate our Indian neighbors in these blessings, and to teach them to become fit members of organised society.
The spirit which manifested itself on the suspension of our right of deposit at New-Orleans, the cool and collected firmness with which our citizens awaited the operation of our government for its peaceable restoration, their present approbation of a conduct strictly neutral and just, between the powers of Europe now in contention, evince dispositions which ought to secure their peace, to protect their industry from new burdens, their citizens from violence, and their commerce from spoliation.
The falsehoods and indecencies you allude to, in which certain presses indulge themselves habitually, defeat their own object before a just and enlightened public. This unenviable and only resource, let it be our endeavor to leave them, by an honest and earnest pursuit of the public prosperity.
I thank you fellow citizens for the affectionate expressions of your concern for my happiness present and future: and I pray heaven to have yourselves, as well as our common country in its holy keeping.
TH: JEFFERSON.