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proprietary dependents excepted, who great.y rejoice and even insult the petitioners and their friends. Since the receipt of this incredible letter, extracts whereof have been industriously sent all over the province, in order to spirit up the temper and violent disposition of their party, I have left nothing in my power unessayed among our friends to oppose the torrent, and to prevail on them to discredit this account, and to believe that his Majesty will yet hear their petitions and redress their aggrievances. And I have been obliged to give many extracts of your letters to me, respecting the state of those petitions, to convince them of my assurances, which has, in some degree, prevented their despair, as they have been from thence induced to discredit the extract.

Our Assembly, anxious to know the result of the petitions, have adjourned to the 6th of May next; being inviolably attached to his Majesty, and firmly determined to become his immediate subjects, if there are any human means left to effect it. And since the assurances that have been received, that our liberties will be preserved on the change, all their constituents (the proprietary dependents and Presbyterians excepted) are determined to support them in the attempt. Should this account from the Proprietor prove true, (which God forbid,) that their petitions are rejected without a hearing, I fear their consternation and distress will be wrought still higher. For, while the present members are continued, I am convinced they will never cease entreating his Majesty to rescue them from the oppression of his private subjects; and that there is a great probability to presume their continuance, will appear from the accounts of the last election. Wherefore I hope the petitions, as you have written, and I have confidently declared, are not rejected,

or laid aside, but will be resumed when the more important American affairs are settled. Nothing less than a change, I think, will satisfy the people; certain I am, a dismission without a hearing never can, but, I fear, will throw this already too unhappy province into equal disorder and confusion with its neighbouring colonies.

You will therefore be pleased to inform me in what state the petitions are before his Majesty's Council, by the earliest opportunity, that I may be enabled to satisfy the people, who rely upon us with certainty. In the mean time, be assured, that nothing in my power shall be wanting to preserve the peace, and render them easy. Believe me, dear friend, ever yours most affectionately,

JOSEPH GALLOWAY.

TO THE EDITOR OF A NEWSPAPER.*

Humorous Account of News-writers, and of the Intelligence often contained in Newspapers.

SIR,

Monday, 20 May, 1765.

In your paper of Wednesday last, an ingenious correspondent who calls himself THE SPECTATOR, and dates from Pimlico, under the guise of good will to the news-writers, whom he calls a "useful body of men in this great city," has, in my opinion, artfully attempted to turn them and their works into ridicule,

* This humorous letter was written in London, probably with the view of exposing the idle and false reports that were constantly circulated respecting the American colonies. It is here printed as transcribed from the original draft, in which the name of the newspaper for which it was intended is not mentioned.

wherein, if he could succeed, great injury might be done to the public as well as to these good people.

Supposing, Sir, that the "we hears" they give us of this or the other intended tour or voyage of this and the other great personage were mere inventions, yet they at least offer us an innocent amusement while we read, and useful matter for conversation when we are disposed to converse.

Englishmen, Sir, are too apt to be silent when they have nothing to say, and too apt to be sullen when they are silent; and, when they are sullen, to hang themselves. But, by these we hears, we are supplied with abundant funds for discourse. We discuss the motives for such voyages, the probability of their being undertaken, and the practicability of their execution. Here we display our judgment in politics, our knowledge of the interests of princes, and our skill in geography, and (if we have it) show our dexterity in argumentation. In the mean time, the tedious hour is killed, we go home pleased with the applauses we have received from others, or at least with those we give to ourselves; we sleep soundly, and live on, to the comfort of our families. But, Sir, I beg leave to say, that all the articles of news that seem improbable are not mere inventions. Some of them, I can assure you on the faith of a traveller, are serious. truths. And here, quitting Mr. Spectator of Pimlico, give me leave to instance the various accounts the news-writers have given us, with so much honest zeal for the welfare of Poor Old England, of the establishing manufactures in the colonies to the prejudice of those of the kingdom. It is objected by superficial readers, who yet pretend to some knowledge of those countries, that such establishments are not only improbable, but impossible, for that their sheep have but

little wool, not in the whole sufficient for a pair of s.kings a year to each inhabitant; that, from the unive arness of labor among them, the working of iron and other materials, except in a few coarse instances, is impracticable to any advantage.

Dear Sir, do not let us suffer ourselves to be amused with such groundless objections. The very tails of the American sheep are so laden with wool, that each has a little car or wagon on four little wheels, to support and keep it from trailing on the ground. Would they caulk their ships, would they even litter their horses with wool, if it were not both plenty and cheap? And what signifies the dearness of labor, when an English shilling passes for five and twenty? Their engaging three hundred silk throwsters here in one week for New York was treated as a fable, because, forsooth, they have "no silk there to throw." Those, who make this objection, perhaps do not know, that, at the same time the agents from the King of Spain were at Quebec to contract for one thousand pieces of cannon to be made there for the fortification of Mexico, and at New York engaging the usual supply of woollen floor-carpets for their West India houses, other agents from the emperor of China were at Boston treating about an exchange of raw silk for wool, to be carried in Chinese junks through the Straits of Magellan.

And yet all this is as certainly true, as the account said to be from Quebec, in all the papers of last week, that the inhabitants of Canada are making preparations for a cod and whale fishery this "summer in the upper Lakes." Ignorant people may object, that the upper Lakes are fresh, and that cod and whales are salt water fish; but let them know, Sir, that cod, like other fish when attacked by their enemies, fly into

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any water where they can be safest; that whales, when they have a mind to eat cod, pursue them wherr they fly; and that the grand leap of the vet the chase up the Falls of Niagara is esteemed, by all who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature. Really, Sir, the world is grown too incredulous. It is like the pendulum ever swinging from one extreme to another. Formerly every thing printed was believed, because it was in print. Now things seem to be disbelieved for just the very same reason. Wise men wonder at the present growth of infidelity. They should have considered, when they taught people to doubt the authority of newspapers and the truth of predictions in the almanacs, that the next step might be a disbelief of the well vouched accounts of ghosts and witches, and doubts even of the truths of the Creed.

Thus much I thought it necessary to say in favor of an honest set of writers, whose comfortable living depends on collecting and supplying the printers with news at the small price of sixpence an article, and who always show their regard to truth, by contradicting in a subsequent article such as are wrong, for another sixpence, to the great satisfaction and improvement of us coffee-house students in history and politics, and all future Livys, Rapins, Robertsons, Humes, and Macaulays, who may be sincerely inclined to furnish the world with that rara avis, a true history. I am, Sir, your humble servant,

A TRAVELLER.

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