Our true situation appears to me to be this,--a new extensive Country containing within itself the materials for forming a Government capable of extending to its Citizens all the blessings of Civil & religious liberty--capable of making them happy at home. This is the great end of Republican Establishments. We mistake the object of our Government, if we hope or wish that it is to make us respectable abroad. Conquest or superiority among other powers is not or ought not ever to be the object of republican Systems. If they are sufficiently active & energetic to rescue us from contempt & preserve our domestic happiness & security, it is all we can expect from them,--it is more than almost any other Government ensures to its citizens. I believe this observation will be found generally true:--that no two people are so exactly alike in their situation or circumstances as to admit the exercise of the same Government with equal benefit; that a system must be suited to the habits & genius of the People it is to govern, and must grow out of them. The people of the U. S. may be divided into three classes--_Professional men_ who must from their particular pursuits always have a considerable weight in the Government while it remains popular--_Commercial men_, who may or may not have weight as a wise or injudicious commercial policy is pursued.--If that commercial policy is pursued which I conceive to be the true one, the merchants of this Country will not or ought not for a considerable time to have much weight in the political scale.--The third is the _landed interest_, the owners and cultivators of the soil, who are and ought ever to be the governing spring in the system.--These three classes, however distinct in their pursuits are individually equal in the political scale, and may be easily proved to have but one interest. The dependence of each on the other is mutual. The merchant depends on the planter. Both must in private as well as public affairs be connected with the professional men; who in their turn must in some measure depend on them. Hence it is clear from this manifest connection, & the equality which I before stated exists, & must for the reasons then assign, continue, that after all there is one, but one great & equal body of Citizens composing the inhabitants of this Country among whom there are no distinctions of rank, and very few or none of fortune. For a people thus circumstanced are we then to form a Government & the question is what sort of Government is best suited to them.