The Pennsylvania ledger, or, The Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, & New-Jersey weekly advertiser — Philadelphia, Pa., 1776-01-20 00:00:00, page 1

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, , # Subferiptions are gratefully received bv
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At the Requed of a Number of Gentlemen, and
particularly some reputable FARMERS, —
is now Printing by Subfeription, by JAMES
HUM PHREY S, junior, for the Advan
tage of the Country in general.
RURAL CECONOMY:
Or ESSAYS on the
Practical Parts of Husbandry.
Designed to explain several of the mod important
Methods of conducing Farms of various Kinds;
including many ufeful Hints to Gentlemen
Farmers, relative to the economical Manage
ment of their Business.
Containing, among other Enquiries.
OF that proportioned Farm, which is, of all
others, the mod profitable.
Of the bed Method of concluding Farms that con
fid all of Grass, or all of Arable Land.
Of the Means of keeping, the Year round, the mod
Cattle on a given Quantity of Land.
Considerations on the ©economical Conduct of
Gentlemen Farmers.
Of the cheaped Way of manuring Land.
Of the Comparative Profit of Farming different
Soils.
Of the New Husbandry.
Of Experimental Agriculture.
Of the Management of Borders of arable Fields.
Of Periodical Publications concerning Rural Oeco
nomics.
To which is added The
RURAL SOCRATES:
Being Memoirs of a Country Philosopher-
By the Author of the Farmer's Letters.
Of 'HIS is to give notice that, JOHN BUFFEN
I who had been recruiting in the Jerseys, as
well as in Philadelphia, whose men were taken from
him by Capt. Stewart, Ranaway with a shirt mark
ed G. M. a linen map handkerchief, and a new pair
of (hoes, belonging to the fubicriber, at the sign of
Hudibrafs. He had on when he went away, a green
coat, red jacket, a pair of ribbed fudian breeches,
a pair of ipott d worded flockings, new shoes, and
beaver hat; he is about 5 feet 6 inches high, frefh
coloured. Whoever takes up said John Buffen,
fliall receive Tuo Dollars, paid by me
f GEORGE MILLWAR
Jud PUBLISHED"^"T^b E S^O LD,I By
James Humphreys, junior,
LETTER S,
Written by the late Right Honourable, the
Earl of Chefterfield,
To his Son, PHILIP STANHOPE.
Together with several other pieces, on various
fubjeds: Published by Mrs. Eugenia Stanhope, from
the originals, now in her pofleffion. In four
Volumes —Price, Twenty Six Shillings, Bound
and letter'd.
WEEKLY
PENNSYLVANIA
January 20, 1776.
Or the Virginia, Maryland,
SATURDAY,
EXTRAACTS from the Sentiments of a Fo
reigner on the Disputes of Great-Britain and
America. (Afeu copies may be had of the printer )
“ ✓ Y REAT-BRITAIN enjoys in her colonies all
l_lthat authority which (he should desire, She
hath a negative on all the laws which they enad.
The whole of the executive power is in the hands of
those to whom die delegates it. An appeal lies to
her tribunal in all civil causes. It is her sovereign
will that decides with refped to all commercial in
tercourses which the colonies are permitted to form
and keep up. To hang weights on the yoke of a
domination so wifely combined, would be to plunge
again a new continent into a chaos, from which
it hath with difficulty emerged by the efforts of two
ages of unremitting labour; it would be to compel
the sons of toil, who have cleared and cultivated it
to arm themselves in defence of those sacred rights
which they hold equally by nature's charter, and by
social compass. The people of England—that peo
ple so passionately fond of Liberty, as on some oc
casions to have proteded it in regions remote from
their climate, and unknown to their intereds, shall
they abandon those sentiments which their glory,
their virtue, their inftind, their fafety, render it
their eternal duty to adhere to? Can they so far be
tray those rights which are so dear to them, as to
aim at reducing their brethren and their children
to slavery? Should factious spirits however form so
deadly a conspiracy, and in an hour of madness and
intoxication, prevail on the mother country to adopt
it; what ought the Reflations of the Colonies to be
to save themselves from failing into the mod abso
lute dependence?
“ Previous to their throwing their eyes forward
to this subversion of the political system, let them
revolve in their thoughts all the Benefits which they
derive from their original country. England hath
ever been to them an Out-work of Defence against
the potent nations of Europe. She hath served
them as a guide and a governor, to prevent or to
heal those civil diffentions, which mutual jealousy
and emulation are too apt to excite amongst infant
colonies, growing up in each others neighbourhood.
To the influence of her excellent constitution are
they indebted for that peace and prosperity which
they enjoy. While the colonies continue to live under
a rule to lalutary and so gentle, they mud go on pro
gressively in that boundlels career, which the vigour
of their industry will stretch even to the remotest
defarts.
“ Let their love of the parent country however
be attended with a certain jealousy refpeding their
own Liberty. Let their rights be continually ex
amined, explained, difeuffed. Let them accustom
themselves to chefifh those who, on every occasion,
remind them of these rights, as their best citizens.
“ Should administration, for ever composed of
ambitious men, even in the freed dates, attempt to
augment the power of the Crown, or the opulence
of the capital, at the expence of the colonies, they
should oppose an invincible refinance to such usurp
ation. Every encroachment of government repel'd
by vigorous Remonstrances, is almost condantly
checked; while those grievances, the redress of
which the people have not the courage to insist on,
are uniformly followed by new oppressions. Nati
ons, in general, are more formed to feel than to
think; they have no other idea of the legality of
power than the very exercise of it. Habituated to
implicit obedience, the mod of them become fami
liarized to the harshness of their particular govern
ments; and ignorant of the true origin or object of
civil society, they have no conception of the limits
of authority. Above all, in dates where the prin
ciples of legislation are confounded with those of
religion, even as one extravagant tenet, is fufficient to
introduce a thousand others to minds already de
ceived, so the firft encroachment of governments
opens a door to every succeeding one." Who believes
the mod believes the lead; who can do the mod can
do the lead; it is by this double abuse of credulity
and of power that all the absurdities and iniquities
in matters of religion and of politicks, have crept
into the world to crush and debase mankind; hap
pily that spirit of toleration and of liberty, which
hath hitherto reigned in the English colonies, hath
BOWK
THE
ADVERTISER.
L ED G E R:
This enligtened people know very well that vio
lent measures and the lad appeal can only be judi
fied, when every gentle means of conciliation hath
been tried in vain. # They know also that reduced
to the dire alternative of slavery or civil war, if they
mud take up arms in defence of civil liberty, it is
their duty to avoid sullying so fair a cause by the
horrors and barbarities which arc the attendants of
sedition; and that with the determined purpose of
never ffieathing the sword till they have recovered
their rights, they should deem the re-edablifhment
of their original, their constitutional independence,
a fufficient fruit of their victory.
And in fact, we should be cautious how we
confound that refidance which the Enghfh colonies
ought to oppose to the mother country, with the
fury of a people driven by a lading and intolerable
oppression to revolt against their sovereign. When
once the slave of defpotilm hath burst his chains a
sunder, hath committed his fate to the deeifion of
the sword, he is obliged to massacre his tyrant, to
exterminate his race and his poderity, to change
the torm of that government of which he had been
the vidim through successive ages. If he durll not
do all this, sooner or later he would be punished
for poffiffing but a half courage. Such is the
curie of fadions in an absolute government, that
neither prince nor people can know any bounds in
their reientment, became they have not known any
in the exercise of authority. But a well polled con
stitution, like that of the English colonies, carries
in its principles, and the limitations of its different
powers, a preservative and antidote against the evils
of anarchy. Whenever the mother country hath
removed the ground of their complaints, by re-es
tablishing them in their original situation, they
should red contented, that being, on the whole, the
happiest to which a wife people could justly aspire.
“ They could not embrace a system of absolute
INDEPENDENCE withoutburlfing the bands
of Religion, of Oaths, of Laws, of Language, of
Blood, of Intered, of Commerce, of all thole habi
tudes, in fine, which hold them united amon^
themselves, under the peaceful influence of their
common parent. Who fees not, that such rending
to pieces must reach the entrails, the heart, the ve
ry lite of the colonies? Should they have the good
fortune to escape the fatal extremity of civil wars,
wouid it be an easy matter for them to agree on a
new form of government? Was every colony to
become a didind and separate date, what endless
divisions amongst them! One may judge of the re
ciprocal enmities which would originate from such
a separation. by the fate of all societies bordering
on -each other. Should such anumber of little com^
mon-wealths, where the diversity of laws, the ine
quality of riches, the variety of possessions must
sow in secret, the feeds of an opposition in interests,
be disposed to form a confederated union, how ad
jud the rank which each should hold in it, and the
influence which each should possess, in proportic.c
to 'heir relpedive risks and importance? Jealousy
and a hundred other passions, 'which so early divi
ded the wife dates of Greece, would not these spread
difeord through a multitude of colonies, rather as
sociated by relentment vnd indignation, which are
but transitory and galling ties,' than by the fob'er
well-weighed principles of a natural and permanent
union? All these con fiderations surely evince, that
an eternal divorce from the, capital would be a'great
and grievous misfortune to the English colonies."'
;
v, ? , , „ Q
^,°. NO 0 N, October 28.
The following, it is taid, was tlle amendment pro
posed on Thursday lad in the House of Lords,
by the M s of R- m.
“ That we behold, with the utmost concern, the
disorders and difeontents in the Britiffi Colonies,ra
thci increased than dimimllied, by tire means that
have been used to suppress and allay them; a cir
enhance alone fufncient to give this House jttft rea
son so fear that thole means were not oti^hrdf;
Pennsylvania, & New-Jersey
p'referved them from this extremity of weakness and
of misery. They feel the dignity of human nature
fufficiently to resist oppression, were it at the ha
zard of their lives.
January 20, 1776.
Numb. Lil