"Never Despair of the Commonwealth"

Excerpt from Thomas Jefferson's letter to Nathaniel Niles

March 22, 1801

"The late chapter of our history furnishes a lesson to man perfectly new. The times have been awful, but they have proved a useful truth that the good citizen must never despair of the commonwealth. How many good men abandoned the deck, & gave up the vessel as lost. It furnishes a new proof of the falsehood of Montesquieu’s doctrine that a republic can be preserved only in a small territory. The reverse is the truth. Had our territory been even a third only of what it is, we were gone. But while frenzy & delusion, like an epidemic gained certain parts, the residue remained sound & untouched, and held on till their brethren could recover from the temporary delirium...."