electors of this city that their measures are desirable. But, alas! they themselves are afraid to trust to their arguments; they know their fallacy; they know that their plot is so thinly covered that men of reflection and consideration, men who have lived under the generous plan of liberty, which has been handed down by our forefathers for any length of time, are not to be gulled into their visionary scheme; and are now, by a bold stroke, attempting to take the election of four members for this city out of the hands of the lawful electors, and give to a new set of men the only privilege which subjects can rely on as a security for their liberty.

I need not tell you that the piece I have in my view is that signed An Elector; a piece, give me leave to say, that contains treason—the worst of treason—treason against the Constitution. The scope of this performance is, to destroy the right of election; for if every stickler for dependancy on Great Britain is to be kept far from our Councils, I will undertake to say that two-thirds at least of the electors of this city will lose their voices. Conscious of this, they want to deprive them of their votes, and give the power to those only who have already fixed their sentiments in favour of independence, without regard to their ago, condition, or their knowledge of our Constitution. We well know that a great number of the Associators in this city are minors and apprentices, a great number of them new men lately arrived among us, who know not the happy form of the Government of Pennsylvania; yet these are the persons who are to elect Representatives for this city to guard the Constitution against invaders. Our author supposes, and perhaps truly, that such men, if they are permitted to vote, will be easily influenced to vote for that party who raise them to consequence by giving them the rights of citizens before the law and Constitution of the Province entitle them; and men thus rewarded beforehand for the part they are to act, are the only persons who can be relied on to carry their point.

This writer impudently takes it for granted that all men who oppose the scheme of Independence are advocates for absolute tyranny. Were this once proved, as it has been often asserted, the contest would be at an end, and we should all unite in hand and heart for their beloved Utopian plan; but it never has, it never can be proved. The opposers of Independence in every publick body, from the Congress downwards, and in the mass of the people, are the true Whigs, who are for preserving the Constitution, as well against the secret machinations of ambitious innovators as against the open attacks of the British Parliament; they are the men who first set on foot the present opposition, and who, I trust, will, if they are permitted to go on, bring it to a happy conclusion.

In the second paragraph, this writer discovers the true motives of his party: He tells us “the idea of a Crown is rendered detestable to the whole Western World.” What a daring falsehood is this! When have the Western World authorized you, Mr. Elector, thus to speak their sentiments? Do you not know that you stand contradicted by the voice of the Representatives of all those Colonies who have yet spoken their minds upon the subject? Is there one Colony whose Representatives, either in Assembly or in Convention, have taken upon them to instruct their Delegates to favour the whim of Independence and a Republick? You know there is not.

We are told in the last paragraph that a preclusion of all men below the estate of fifty pounds from voting seems peculiar to this city alone. From this hint I collect that the writer has deceived you in calling himself an Elector. What elector in this city can be found that is so ignorant of our Constitution? There is not a man in the Province who speaks English but knows that this circumstance is not only not peculiar to this city, but universal throughout the Province, and not this Province only, but the Delaware Government and Maryland. In New - Jersey none but a freeholder has a right to vote for Representatives; and when a Convention was lately chosen to represent that Province, the people who were not freeholders complained that they were excluded, and demanded to be admitted to that right upon “the terms of the free Constitution of Pennsylvania.” Their demand was thought reasonable, and granted, and they remain perfectly satisfied. Surely thou must be a stranger in this Province, or thou wouldst have known its Constitution better. But the Boroughs in England, those sinks of corruption, that rotten part of the British Constitution, are to be used as a precedent for the free States of America. “ Burgesses were elected by every resident inhabitant who paid his shot and bore his lot; this I will affirm is the ancient free Constitution, which every honest man will venture his blood to restore.” These are our author’s words. Now these Burgesses are the Representatives of those venal Boroughs in England, against which every honest man now so justly complains. At their first institution they were allowed to send members to Parliament to represent the trading part of the Kingdom, as the Knights of the Shires represented the farmers, who were freeholders; but the very doctrine our author holds up rendered them the servile tools they are at present. Every resident was allowed to vote, whether he had property or not; the majority (being men of little or no property) were, in a course of time, easily brought to part with their votes to acquire a little property; and this put their votes in the power of one or two men of property, who bought them in order to sell them at an advanced price to the candidates. The Ministry in a course of time became the principal purchasers, and now engross the whole race of Borough-jobbers; and hence arises their power to attempt to enslave us. The wise Pennsylvania Legislator, seeing these blemishes in the English Constitution, guarded against them by his Charter to this Province; he fixed the qualifications of electors to such a standard as secures us from bribery, by excluding necessitous poor from a vote, who, perhaps, might be induced to part with it for a mess of pottage, and at the same time allows every man to exercise that right who is so little elevated as to be owner of property to the value of fifty pounds. This generous plan of Government, which has set the name of Penn on a footing with Solon and Lycurgus, is now to be laid waste, to let in the ambitious, Republican schemes of a set of men whom nobody knows.

Permit me, my fellow-citizens, to warn you against the arts of these men. They are attempting to hurry you into a scene of anarchy; their scheme of Independence is visionary; they know not themselves what they mean by it. We are already, to every necessary purpose, independent of Great Britain, and are now fighting to secure good terms of reconciliation. If we continue upon this ground, Great Britain will soon be brought to reason, and our liberty be established on the most lasting foundation. If, on the other hand, we should leap in the dark, and declare to the world that we will have no connection with Great Britain, what do we get by it? Will it frighten Great Britain into our terms? It will not. Will it secure us any foreign assistance? We know not that it will, but have every reason to think the contrary. Will it strengthen the hands of our friends in England, and our advocates in the Parliament? Alas! it will have directly the contrary effect; it will unite the whole force of Great Britain and Ireland against us—a force that has hitherto been much divided, from an opinion that we only seek peace, liberty, and safety, in a constitutional connection with Great Britain. Will it lessen the influence and weaken the hands of the Ministry? No, but the reverse; it will confirm the unjust, the untrue reflections cast upon us by the Ministerial hirelings, that we took up the sword to establish an independent Empire, and will probably save them from destruction. They deceived the Parliament by such information into the present unnatural war; and if they do not make good that information, they must fall a sacrifice to the resentment of a deceived, enraged nation; but if we can be driven into a declaration of it, (whether by Ministerial influence or Republican ambitious partisans, ’ is of no consequence,) the foresight of the Ministry will be applauded, and they supported in their unjust measures. Indeed, it is so much the interest of the Ministry to procure a declaration of Independence, that I cannot help suspecting that it is countenanced by their hirelings, and took its first rise from their influence. Did we know who were the first broachers of the doctrine here, it would be worth while to inquire into their connections in England, and we might probably find that the wheel so violently turned here has some secret connection with the Ministerial machine at home.

Suffer not yourselves, therefore, to be either cajoled or frightened out of your Charter liberties and privileges. Exert yourselves in the choice of men whom you know

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