Gazette Of The United States & Evening Advertiser

PHILADELPHIA,

FEBRUARY 7:

Extract of a letter from a gentleman in New-England to his friend in this city.

"Some time has elapsed since I had the pleasure of hearing from you; I am much pleased with the memorial of the Friends' Society and the address of the worthy Clergy of your City to the Legislature of your State, on the subject of revising the laws for the suppression of vice and immorality, and for enforcing a due observance of the Lord's Day. It was certainly exhibiting a very reasonable testimony against the prevailing irreligious spirit of the times "a Land of Levity" says an excellent writer, "is a Land of Guilt." What, alas then, is a Land abounding in Profaneness and Impiety--and at the very instant when the Supreme Ruler of the World is withdrawing his chastening rod, contending for Theatrical and other amusements, which are evidently calculated to please a corrupt and vitiated mind, and are emphatically characteristic of those who are "Lovers of Pleasure, more than Lovers of God."

I most heartily wish success to the laudable efforts of those who nobly appear to stem the torrent of fashionable vices, more dangerous to morals, because less suspected than flagrant crimes, tho' history and observation concur to evince that the latter are frequently the offspring of the former.

"Before you receive this, I expect that an important and united exertion will be made by petitioning Congress to effect an Abolition of that disgrace to our country-the African Slave Trade. If it were not for those strange extremes which often meet in the same character, I should suppose that the recent information respecting the Piratical Corsairs of Algiers, would entirely supersede the necessity of any reasoning to demonstrate the worse than abominable iniquity of enslaving our fellow-men. I hope that the Legislature of the Union will not be backward in explicitly enacting such laws as will effectually check the system of rapine, fraud, robbery, devastation and murder which constitute the trade. Do, my dear sir, acquaint me of appearances and prospects. I am certain no pains will be declined to effect the object: I consider it as a grand appeal in which all the strength of our Societies will be conjointly applied. O! that the cause of Justice and Humanity may prevail and triumph!"