Peace Is Our Passion.

I Have Overlived The Generation With Which Mutual Labors & Perils Begat Mutual Confidence And Influence.

The Liberty Of The Whole Earth Was Depending On The Issue Of The Contest, And Was Ever Such A Prize Won With So Little Innocent Blood?

I Have No Fear That The Result Of Our Experiment Will Be That Men May Be Trusted To Govern Themselves Without A Master.

Reading, Reflection And Time Have Convinced Me That The Interests Of Society Require The Observation Of Those Moral Precepts Only In Which All Religions Agree (for All Forbid Us To Steal, Murder, Plunder, Or Bear False Witness), And That We Should Not Intermeddle With The Particular Dogmas In Which All Religions Differ, And Which Are Totally Unconnected With Morality.

Turning, Then, From This Loathsome Combination Of Church And State, And Weeping Over The Follies Of Our Fellow Men, Who Yield Themselves The Willing Dupes And Drudges Of These Mountebanks, I Consider Reformation And Redress As Desperate, And Abandon Them To The Quixotism Of More Enthusiastic Minds.