The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

For the New-Hampshire Gazette.

Mess. PRINTERS,

The Public are well pleased to find that there is to be but one News-Paper printed within this State; many inconveniences have arisen by the Advertisements for sale of non-residents lands being published in one paper, and said lands being owned by the subscribers of the other: Several gentlemen have (on such an occasion) been obliged to send an express, at a great expense, to the towns where the vendue was to be held, to prevent their lands being exposed to sale, which they but accidentally heard of. And it must be also pleasing to find that Government have encouraged a post to ride into the interior parts of the State, whereby a communication will now be opened, which hath hitherto been shut, to so great a degree, that proclamations for fasts and thanksgivings have frequently not got to hand until after the appointed days were past: and this want of a free intercourse, has occasioned, in a great measure, the defection of the inhabitants of the upper counties, who have complained that their liberties and privileges have been infringed upon, and that they have been treated with neglect by the lower counties; in this they have been misled by the representations of envious and prejudiced persons. It should be one of the first objects of the government, that for the benefit of the governed in all its parts, the laws that can be conveniently printed in the news paper, should be so done at a moderate expense: and the Journals of the Assembly should also be printed from Court to Court, that the people may know how their Representatives spend their time. And in the next place, a town should be agreed upon as near the center of the State as might best suit the public, for the sessions of the General Assembly; for by confining it through favor, or sinister views, to any one town, must give general discontent: And since the honorable Congress have consented to admit Vermont to be a State, (provided they relinquish all pretensions to jurisdiction east of Connecticut river) the disaffected towns must now soon return to their allegiance to this State, and no doubt will lay before the public what they think to be an infringement on their charters, by taxing them without their consent. They deny that a proportional representation is equal, just, or legal; and if this matter is not amicably settled, we may depend that the wheels of government will soon be clogged, as they are already very numerous, and rapidly increasing, they will soon weigh heavy in the public scale; they may hereafter create many difficulties not easily to be removed. There is another thing that not only the discontented inhabitants, but many in the lower counties, would wish to have done, viz. the recording of deeds and mortgages in the towns where the lands lay; the recorder should be recommended by the town, and appointed by the governor or president, and their fees by the assembly; the public records should be open at all times to be searched, and no recorder should receive more than 6d. for every hour that he is detained in searching the books, and to have nothing, if the book and page is named by the inquirer; great abuses have crept into our public offices respecting extravagant fees, and the subject is often grossly imposed upon. --The fears and prejudices of the disaffected counties should be removed by a candid discussion of their supposed grievances, and every reasonable cause of complaint redressed; they complain that the lower counties have imposed upon them taxation without equal representation; their improvements, which but a few years since were the resort of wild beasts, and from which they have but just began to receive a bare subsistence, have been taxed immoderately, and their persons sent into the wars while their families have suffered the pinching want of every common blessing of life. It has been industriously propagated among these people, that a few designing men in the lower counties wanted to get rid of them, because, say they--the seat of government will soon be removed to some town more central in the State, and they fear such a removal will soon occasion their own from all public employments, of which they are very tenacious. These artful insinuations may be easily obviated, and the minds of the discontented soon quieted, their fears suppressed, and their complaints heard and redressed.

SPECTATOR INDEPENDENS.