The New Hampshire Gazette

Political Miscellany.
From the Eastern Argus.
Messrs. Printers,

I wrote from the metropolis, and I live in a small inland town, receiving information depends on reading newspapers, with now and then a gratuitous lecture from our Priest, Doctor Reverence, our Lawyer, Mr. Sparkish, or our Physician, Doctor Proprietatis—and as they all three differ in their principles, the Priest being an Adamite, the Lawyer a Hamiltonian, and the Doctor a Jefferonian, I shall appeal to you for a solution of my doubts, occasioned by their dissonance.

I shall also from time to time give you my opinion on such subjects as I may find time to examine: and those of which I am wholly ignorant, I shall only make queries; expecting some of your customers of leisure and erudition to answer them satisfactorily in due time. In prosecuting my plan, I expect to aid the inceptive politician, while the solution of my doubts may aid me and others, who are seeking a thorough knowledge of the interests of our common country.

The political faith and practice of each country town, depend in a great measure on that of the three characters already mentioned. Although I believe there are more Republican Ministers of the Gospel throughout the whole continent, than there are Federal Priests, so called; yet I fear that in New-England, we have a majority of the latter description. The Baptists, Methodists and all Dissenters from Episcopacy and Congregationalism, are to be excepted from the calculation; being almost unanimously the firm friends of religious and civil liberty, which they know to be coeval.

New-England certainly contains a considerable number of Republican Lawyers of the first respectability, yet a majority of the profession seem to be leagued together to support and promote each other, and to destroy man's rights; they are despising the very People on whom they riot.

The practice of Physicians and Surgeons naturally leads them to the contemplation of the physical and anatomical equality of man. The transition to their equal, statistical and theological rights is easy; they are therefore generally friends to the unalienable birth-rights of freemen. Nor are they pleased with the unequal exactions which the gentlemen of the bar are ever making of the public suffrage and patronage.

Dr. Reverence, our Minister, during the American war, was a high Whig. He then declaimed weekly against Great Britain, as a nation of robbers and cut-throats; called King George a Tyrant; and said that Whigism or Democracy was the only righteous government. He insisted that all the Subjects of George were slaves, & ever would be such: that they were in bondage to the King and Clergy.—He frequently descanted on the enormous and unequal taxes and impositions of Britain, and the inequality and corruption of their representation, and said that only about one hundredth part of the people were allowed to vote for members to Parliament.

He would next speak largely on the religious persecution of Dissenters from the Church of England where every man, whatever be his religion, whether Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Quaker, or other non-conformist, are not only deprived of the advantages of full citizenship (being ineligible to any office, civil or military); but are also compelled to pay tithes to the Episcopalian Clergy, whom they never hear, as also to pay their own particular Minister whom they do hear. He inveighed against this wickedness; and declared that all men should be free to serve God according to the dictates of his own conscience; said that this glorious freedom was what induced our progenitors to settle this then howling wilderness. In short, the Doctor was then a zealous supporter of civil and religious liberty.

But as to relate, Dr. Reverence has since become an apostate every way. I think he has abandoned every principle which he so ardently inculcated in the Revolutionary War. He is an advocate for inequality and slavery, and speaks much of an union of Church with State, which he used to tell us was the ruin of England. To convince him he is wrong, I read to him a number of passages from his book of printed sermons. He then acknowledged that he had altered his opinion, and that French Democracy has cured him of Liberty.

Now, Messrs. Printers, as I understand that many make the same plea for deserting the good principles of Franklin and Hancock, I wish them to prove, that because the French nation have not been fortunate in their struggle to regain their long lost liberty, therefore freedom is not valuable or worth preserving.—Have the misfortunes of the French become their crime, and a warning to the oppressed to be patient in their chains and bondage?

The Doctor's sermons were formerly half filled with the words Liberty, Freedom, Rights of Man, and Rights of Conscience—now the Doctor loathes the sound of such words; and says their very sound makes him sick. He says we must have a strong government, like that of England—the People are their own worst enemies, and the good and wise few must direct, and ought to direct—that the majority are all mad, and Jefferson a fool to advocate so great a freedom of conscience—that his principles make fanatics and camp-meetings, and such wild kind of revivals of religion as we hear of, in those democratical States which have adopted his creed—and that if a stop cannot be put to such doings, every fisherman or cobler will set up preaching: and pretend he is a saint; and those men who have expended a fortune to get an education, and have learned all the dead languages that ever died, will be only on a level with the winish multitude, which would neither be right nor fair. He likewise pretends, that none are fit for Rulers, Preachers, Lawyers, or Physicians, but such as have been polished in a College and have their diplomas safely folded in the till of the chest. He even goes so far as to call Franklin, Washington and Sullivan mere empirics, because they acquired their science out of college.—The Doctor, whom we hired to preach the gospel, has quit that then for politics, and instead of praying for President, he is ever "braying at him;" so that he has preached me out of the meeting-house. I think he is guilty of sedition, and that he cannot recover his salary. He is now above 80 years of age, and little hopes of his amendment are entertained by his parishioners.—He has ever lived higher than any of us, and is become quite rich, from the hard earnings of a very poor parish; we therefore wish to be rid of him. The opinion of some Republican Lawyer is requested on this subject.

AN ESSEX FARMER.