The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

PROVIDENCE, June 5.

Extract of a letter from North-Carolina, dated May 14, 1788.

"We are all in an anxious state of suspense, waiting the event of the new Constitution. I attended our assembly last December, and from the most accurate statement we could make, two thirds of the members were in favour of the measure. After which 3 or 4 designing men, of influence in the back counties, whose interest it is to promote a state of anarchy, set out violently in opposition to it, terrifying the people with an idea that it was intended to establish a King, to bring us under French government, to establish the Roman Catholic Religion, to suppress the liberty of the press, to build a high wall round the ten mile square (the intended seat of Government) to be garrisoned by 100,000 regulars, to subvert our liberties, and many other like wicked and foolish absurdities. Such unfair representations you may well suppose had the intended effect with an ignorant and illiterate people. The consequence is, that the interior counties are violently opposed to what is evidently calculated to promote their own interest and happiness. I have the pleasure to assure, that the lower counties are as warm on the other side, so that the balance hangs upon a poise at present; but as Virginia and South-Carolina will undoubtedly adopt the Constitution; and as the most respectable characters, and all the best speakers in the state are elected on the federal side, I venture to predict, that the Constitution will be adopted by a respectable majority of this state; for our Convention will never be so mad as to vote themselves out of the Union, and think of standing upon their own bottom, a distinct nation, surrounded by powerful and confederated states. This is the alternative! It is however clearly my opinion, that unless we come peaceably into it, we shall be lashed into it, in the events of things, or suffer ourselves to be annihilated as a state."