Not only the Message but also the language, still more emphatic, of private letters showed that Jefferson had become a convert to manufactures and protected industries. “My idea is that we should encourage home manufactures,” he said,[315] “to the extent of our own consumption of everything of which we raise the raw material.” This avowal did much to increase the ill-will of New England, where Jefferson’s hostility to foreign commerce as a New England interest was believed to be inveterate and deadly; but the anger of Massachusetts and Connecticut at the wound thus threatened to their commerce and shipping could not exceed the perplexity of Southern Republicans, who remembered that Jefferson in 1801 promised them “a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another; which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” Not only manufactures but also internal improvements were to become a chief object of governmental regulation to an extent which no Federalist had ever suggested. The absolute prohibition of foreign manufactures was to go hand in hand with a magnificent scheme of public works. In the actual state of public affairs,--without revenue and on the verge of war with France and England,--Jefferson exposed himself to ridicule by alluding to a surplus; years were to pass before the employment of surplus revenue was to become a practical question in American politics, and long before it rose Jefferson had reverted to his old theories of “a wise and frugal government;” but in 1808, as President, he welcomed any diversion which enabled him to avoid the need of facing the spectre of war. “The probable accumulation of the surpluses of revenue,” he said, “whenever the freedom and safety of our commerce shall be restored, merits the consideration of Congress. Shall it lie unproductive in the public vaults? Shall the revenue be reduced? Or shall it not rather be appropriated to the improvements of roads, canals, rivers, education, and other great foundations of prosperity and union, under the powers which Congress may already possess, or such amendments of the Constitution as may be approved by the States?”