Gazette Of The United States

SALEM, March 9, 1790.

LAST Tuesday, the District Court of the United States for the District of Massachusetts was opened in this town. No business came before the Grand Jury at this Court. Two actions, for breaches of the Revenue Law, were tried before the Petit Jury, in the name of the United States. The business being finished, the Court adjourned on Thursday morning.

At the opening of this Court, the Hon. Judge LOWELL gave a Charge to the Grand Jury—of which the following is an extract.

"AS the prevention of offences is much more useful to the community, than the detection and punishment of them, it cannot be improper, at the commencement of a new government, to make such observations to those whose business it is to inquire concerning them, and by that means to the community, as may tend to the avoidance of them.

"If the government lately established, or any national government, is necessary for the peace, safety and happiness of the citizens of America, there is one thing which especially requires their very serious attention—I mean the REVENUE—which is necessary to enable it to do justice to its creditors, to re-establish its credit, and to exercise the powers and functions of government—in short, without which it cannot exist. Before the revolution in America, when the regulation of our trade was in the hands of a government in which we had no share, and by the operations of which whatever was taken from our citizens lessened the burthen of their own, the revenue laws were considered as a grievance; and the interests and passions of individuals running in the same course with the general sentiment, and the too lax morals of some of their officers having left them open to corrupt practices, the evasion of those laws was considered by some as justifiable, and by many as but a venial fault. Ill habits are hard to break. The crooked path, once entered, is apt to lead us further astray. Have we not some reason to fear, that the sentiments so imbibed may be again brought into action? But if we consider that to defeat our revenue laws will be to destroy our government—and, that to embarrass and impede them will embarrass that government, and occasion the necessity of new laws to extend the sources and make up the deficiencies—that new checks and penalties must be created, and the expense of the collection will be thereby enormously increased—can we hesitate to declare, that it is the duty of good citizens to observe and support these laws? But when we further consider, that what we defraud our country at large of, we take from the pockets of our honest and conscientious neighbors, and being able by that means to under-sell them, their fortunes and credit may be absolutely destroyed—and if we further consider, that such evasions can seldom take place, without being tinctured with a false appeal to that BEING who knows our hearts, and who can certainly avenge himself—can we have less hesitation to declare, that it is the duty of every good man to aid the execution of these laws?—We are now at the beginning. Public sentiment is with us. Each deviation will open a door for others. Would it not be happy then for ourselves and our nation, if such practices should become highly disreputable—and if the love of virtue and our country should obtain a triumph over the meaner passion of avarice, and its natural offspring, dishonesty?"