As the head of a party which had effected a revolution in government, Jefferson's first care was to reconcile his opponents to Republican rule. The inaugural address emphasized the principles upon which all republican governments must be based. It is often said that these principles might have been uttered by Washington with equal propriety--as good Federalist doctrine. This is to mistake the significance of the revolution which had occurred. A party had triumphed which Federalists firmly believed inimical to all government. The announcement that the fundamental principles to which all Americans were attached would guide the new Administration had a meaning which it would not have had if uttered by a Federalist President. So far did Jefferson lean in holding out the olive branch that he ran the risk of minimizing the revolution of 1800. To say that "every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists," was to contradict his often expressed conviction that his party had saved the country from monarchy. Aside from such generalities as that wise government consists in restraining men from injuring one another and leaving them free to regulate their own pursuits, the inaugural address contains no declaration of purpose or policies. No such reticence marks Jefferson's private letters, which are, indeed, the best expression of his political philosophy. Nowhere is the governing purpose of his Administration stated more clearly than in a letter written just before his inauguration. "Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization and a very unexpensive one,--a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants."