Gazette Of The United States And Daily Evening Advertiser

For the Gazette of the United States.

To the LEGISLATURES of

Pennsylvania, New-Jersey, & New-York.

IT is a wise observation, that laws make men. Moral causes are more powerful than climate, in giving a character to a nation. Of all political schemes, was any ever better adapted to produce liberty, knowledge, virtue, and happiness, than the town corporations of Connecticut? As a friend to liberty and public order, a correspondent wishes to call the attention of the State Legislatures to this important consideration. Our country is now settling rapidly; it is now in our power to adopt the example of Connecticut. It will be very difficult, if we neglect it till the country is fully settled. It would require a book to explain and illustrate the excellencies of the system recommended. The condition of Connecticut may save the trouble of writing and reading such a book. Town governments bring into the hands of the people themselves, all the power that can well remain there without representation—yet they favour public order eminently. Democracy, and strictness of authority, go hand in hand. The people are trained to order—to the business, rather than the theory of administration; and, therefore, the new fangled fanatical notions of disturbers of the public peace, are counteracted more successfully in Connecticut, than in any state differently organized. The people are not only used to administer the laws, (and as that takes off their mystery, it takes off their terror and odium, also) but they are interested in good order, in proportion to the power they hold. By possessing town powers they have a stake which public confusion would take out of their hands. They are so far rulers, rather than the ruled.

If liberty and power can be reconciled in practice, no scheme promises to be so successful. The laudable zeal which is awakened in favour of schools, renders these remarks proper and reasonable. New-York, Jersey, and Pennsylvania, are peopled in a manner to admit of this distribution of the energies and blessings of society. Little has been said, and men of sense seem to have thought less than they ought, of the singular excellence of the institution of town corporations.

By means of town governments religious instruction may be provided for; and, notwithstanding the turn towards atheism or deism which the sophists and incendiaries are every where circulating, I am still old fashioned enough to believe that without it men would be very like bears. Ministers, and schoolmasters, are the magistrates of virtue; and without town corporations, it will be difficult to gather the scattered settlers into neighbourhoods and happy villages—they will be dispersed. People are fond of collecting their settlements round the meeting houses and school houses—less land is taken for a farm, and of course better cultivated. The country being thickly peopled, becomes stronger, richer, wiser, more civilized, virtuous and happy. These ideas are intended merely as hints, to draw the attention of the rulers of the American States to the subject: Their success would be worth more than ten bloody victories, or a hundred gold mines.

WILLIAM PENN.