The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

Messieurs Printers,

I HAVE always been taught to look on our Representatives as the guardians of the people, and supposed the meaning of guardians were protectors and defenders of those who were unable to protect and defend themselves: but looking over an act passed by our General Court, for confiscating the estates of British subjects, and of the Absentees, I find a paragraph which authorises the Judge of Probate to allow the wife or widow of the absentees, one third, in the same manner as if her husband died intestate, but makes no kind of allowance for fatherless children. Mess. Printers, do be so kind as to let us know what is the meaning of it? for to allow the widow, who is perhaps able to take care of herself, one third of the whole estate, and not allow the helpless infant a farthing to support it and give it an education, is something so extraordinary that I do not know what to think of it, for I certainly have had a very wrong idea of the meaning of the word guardian, or else have been taught to consider the General Court in a wrong light. Considering them as the guardians and protectors of the people, I should have thought it was their peculiar business not to suffer the fatherless to be spoiled of their inheritance: and such children are considered in the act as fatherless, and children are always heirs to the father's estate when he dies intestate: but this act, instead of protecting, in fact takes away all their property, which is their all for support and education, and turns them out as vagabonds merely for the crime of their parent; which in a law of an older date, is forbidden. That law given by Him who styles himself the Father of the Fatherless, says, that the iniquity of the father shall no longer be visited on the children, but that every one shall bear his own iniquity: therefore, if that law is just, and I conclude it is so, I think the one now in question so opposite to it, that I must suppose it the contrary, until I am convinced that a law then unjust can now be just.