done your utmost, and must abide the consequences. Yet, who can reflect on such conduct without feeling concern ! Who can look unaffected on a body of thoughtful men undoing in one rash hour the labour of seventy years ! Or what can be said in their excuse, more than thit they have arrived at their second childhood-the infancy of three score and ten !*

But my chief design in this Letter is to set forth the inconsistency, partiality, and injustice of the dependant faction, and, like an honest man who courts no favour, to show to them the dangerous ground they stand upon; in order to do which I must refer to the business, event, and probable con sequences of the late election.

The business of that day was to do-what? Why, to elect four Burgesses, to assist those already elected in conducting the military proceedings of this Province against the power of that Crown by whose authority they pretend to sit; and those gentlemen, when elected, are, according to the rules of that House, (as the rest have done,) to take an oath of allegiance to serve the same King against whom this Province, with themselves at the head thereof, are at war; and a necessary qualification required of many voters was, that they likewise should swear allegiance to the same King, against whose power the same House of Assembly had just before obliged them, either to pay a fine or take up arms. Did ever national hypocrisy arise to such a pitch as this! Under the pretence of moderation we are running into the most damnable sins. It is now the duty of every man, from the pulpit and from the press, in his family and in the street, to cry out against it. Good God! have we no remembrance of duty left to the King of Heaven; no conscientious awe to restrain this sacrifice of sacred things? Is this our chartered privilege; this our boasted Constitution, that we can sin and feel it not? The clergy of the English Church, of which I profess myself a member, complain of their situation, and wish relief; in short, every thinking man must feel distress. Yet, to the credit of the people be it spoken, the sin lies not at their door. We can trace the iniquity in this Province to the fountain head, and see by what delusions it has imposed on others. The guilt centres in a few, and flows from the same source that a few years ago avariciously suffered the frontiers of this Province to be deluged in blood; and though the vengeance of Heaven hath slept since, it may awake too soon for their repose.

A motion was some time ago made to elect a Convention to take into consideration the state of the Province. A more judicious proposal could not be thought of. Our present condition is alarming; we are worse off than other Provinces; and such an inquiry is highly necessary. The House of Assembly, in its present form, is disqualified for such business, because it is a branch from that power against whom we are contending. Besides, they are in intercourse with the King’s Representative; and the members which compose the House have, as members thereof, taken an oath to discover to the King of England the very business which, in that inquiry, would unavoidably come before them. Their minds, too, are warped and prejudiced by the Provincial instructions they have arbitrarily and without right issued forth. They are, again, improper, because the inquiry would necessarily extend to them as a body, to see how far it is proper to trust men with such unlimited power as they have lately assumed. In times like these, we must trace to the root and origin of things; it being the only way to become right, when we are got systematically wrong. The motion for a Convention alarmed the Crown and Proprietary dependants; but to every man of reflection, it had a cordial and restorative quality. The case is, first, we have got wrong. Secondly, how shall we get right? Not by a House of Assembly; because they cannot sit as judges in a case where their own existence, under their present form and authority, is to be judged of. However, the objectors found out a way, as they thought, to supersede the necessity of a Convention, by promoting a bill for augmenting the number of Representatives; not perceiving, at the same time, that such an augmentation would increase the necessity of a Convention; because, the more any power is augmented which derives its authority from our enemies, the more unsafe and dangerous it becomes to us. Far be it from the writer of this to censure the individuals which compose that House; his aim being only against the chartered authority under which it acts. However, the bill passed into a law, (which shows that in Pennsylvania, as well as in England, there is no Constitution, but only a temporary form of Government;) while, in order to show the inconsistency of the House in its present state, the motion for a Convention was postponed, and four conscientious independent gentlemen were proposed as candidates, on the augmentation, who, had they been elected, would not have taken the oaths necessary to admit a person as a member of that Assembly. And in that case the House would have had neither one kind of authority nor another; while the old part remained sworn to divulge to the King what the new part thought it their duty to declare against him. Thus matters stood on the morning of the election.

On our side, we had to sustain the loss of those gallant citizens who are now before the walls of Quebeck, and other parts of the continent; while the Tories, by never stirring out, remain at home to take the advantage of elections; and this evil prevails more or less from the Congress down to the Committees. A numerous body of Germans of property, zealots in the cause of freedom, were likewise excluded for non-allegiance; notwithstanding which, the Tory non-conformists, that is, those who are advertised as enemies to their country, were admitted to vote on the other side. A strange contradiction indeed ! To which were added the testimonizing Quakers, who, after suffering themselves to be duped by the meanest of all passions-religious spleen, endeavoured, in a vague uncharitable manner, to possess the Roman Catholicks of the same disease. These parties, with such others as they could influence, were headed by the Proprietary dependants, to support the British and Proprietary power against the publick. They had pompously given out that nine-tenths of the people were on their side. A vast majority truly! But it so happened that, notwithstanding the disadvantages we laid under of having many of our voters rejected, others disqualified for non-allegiance, with the great loss sustained by absentees, the manoeuvre of shutting up the doors between seven and eight o’clock, and circulating the report of adjourning and finishing the next morning, by which several were deceived; it so happened, I say, that, on casting up the tickets, the first in numbers on the dependant side, and the first on the independent side, viz: Clymer and Allen, were a tie, nine hundred and twenty-three each.*

To the description which I have already given of those who are against us, I may add, that they have neither associated nor assisted, or but very few of them; that they are a collection of different bodies blended by accident, having no natural relation to each other; that they have agreed rather out of spite than right; and that, as they met by chance, they will dissolve away again for the want of a cement.

On our side, our object was single, our cause was one; wherefore we cannot separate, neither will we separate. We have stood the experiment of the election, for the sake of knowing the men who were against us. Alas, what are they! One half of them ought to be now asking publick pardon for their former offences; and the other half may think themselves well off that they are let alone. When the enemy enters the country, can they defend themselves? Or will they defend themselves? And if not, are they so foolish as to think that, in times like these, when it is our duty to search the corrupted wound to the bottom, that we, with ten times their strength and number, (if the question were put to the people at large,) will submit to be governed by cowards and Tories?

He that is wise will reflect, that the safest asylum, especially in times of general convulsion, when no settled form of Government prevails, is, the love of the people. All property is safe under their protection. Even in countries

* The Quakers, in 1704, who then made up the whole House of Assembly, zealously guarded their own and the people’s rights against the encroaching power of the Proprietor, who nevertheless outwitted them by finding means (o abolish the original charter and introduce another, of which they complained in the following words: “And then by a subtle contrivance and artifice of thine, laid deeper than the capacities of some could fathom, or the circumstances of many could admit time then to consider of, a way was found out to lay the first charter aside and introduce another."

Query.-Would these men have elected the Proprietary persons which you have done?

*Mr. Samuel Howell, though on their ticket, was never considered by us a Proprietary dependant.