RC (MHi); at foot of text: “Hon. Thomas Jefferson Monticello Va”; endorsed by TJ as received 11 Dec. 1816 and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure: Plumer’s gubernatorial speech to the New Hampshire legislature, 20 Nov. 1816, congratulating that body “on the peace and security of our country, the improved and flourishing state of our national finances, and the increasing confidence of the people in our general government” (p. 7); requesting additional funding for the construction of the new statehouse in Concord; describing his efforts to obtain money, arms, and equipment owed to the state from the federal government because of its participation in the War of 1812; remarking that he had made his recess judicial appointments on the basis of talent, not party spirit; expressing dismay at and offering ways to overcome resistance to reform by some of the trustees of Dartmouth College; reporting on the precarious condition of the state’s finances; complaining that the fees collected by various state officers are often too high or unequally distributed; positing that taxes “should be appropriated solely to useful, necessary, public purposes” and that “We ought studiously to avoid extreme parsimony on the one hand, and extravagance on the other”; and declaring that restraining the propensity of the few to live at the expense of the many is one of the duties “of a free and enlightened legislature” (p. 22) (Journal of the Honorable Senate, of the State of New-Hampshire, at their session, begun … on the Third Wednesday of November, Anno Domini, 1816 [Concord, 1817], 7–23; also published in Amherst, N.H., Farmers’ Cabinet, 23 Nov. 1816, and elsewhere).