Richard Henry Lee to Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates

I have been duly honoured with the letter (and its enclosure) that you were pleased to write to me on the eighteenth October. I pray you, sir, to assure the honourable House of Delegates, that I feel the deepest sense of gratitude and obligation for the good opinion that they are pleased to entertain of my services, and for the condescending and obliging wish that they express for the future prospects of my life. I have ever thought, that the best reward for public service, is the approbation of our country; and surely examples like this are wisely fitted to encourage patriotic zeal, and to support the servants of the public, through the perplexing intricacies of political life. To you, sir, my thanks are particularly due, for the very polite and affectionate manner in which you have been so good as to convey to me the sense of the House. I have the honour to be, with all possible respect, sir,

your most obliged and most obedient servant,

Richard Henry Lee