Gazette Of The United States

FROM THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE.

To the Honorable the MEMBERS of the LEGISLATURE Of PENNSYLVANIA,

The following NOTES, on the subject of that Commonwealth, are most respectfully inscribed, by A CITIZEN OF PENNSYLVANIA.

In the present state of the affairs of the United States, the true condition of the country is an object of most useful knowledge to the body of the people of Europe. To give them some just ideas of that part of it, whose affairs are committed to your charge, is the design of this publication. As you are annually selected, by the free and equal choice of your constituents, from the mass of the citizens, on account of your knowledge of their local interests and general politics, and as you are required, by our constitution, to be inhabitants of the city or county which you respectively represent, it will appear probable to an European reader, that no gross deception or material misrepresentation is designed—imposed upon them, in a publication made under your eyes, and which the writer has ventured to address to you. That you may be able more perfectly to judge of the truth of the facts, and the justice of the observations, they will be confined to Pennsylvania.

THE STATE Of PENNSYLVANIA is an oblong, of 156 miles wide from north to south, by about 190 miles in length from east to west. On the east of it lies the Delaware river, dividing it from West Jersey and New-York; on the north New-York, and a territory of about a million and a half of acres on lake Erie, which Pennsylvania purchased of Congress; on the north west lies lake Erie, on which it has a considerable front and a good port; on the west are new lands of Congress, called the western territory, and a part of Virginia; on the south lies another part of Virginia, Maryland, and the State of Delaware.

The contents of Pennsylvania proper, are about 29,000,000 acres, but, including the lake Erie territory, it exceeds 30,000,000. It lies between 39 deg. and 43 min. and 42 deg. of north lat. The bay and river of Delaware are navigable from the sea up to the great falls at Trenton, and have a light-house, buoys and piers, for the direction and safety of ships. On this river are the small towns of Chester and Bristol, and the city of Philadelphia, which is the capital of the State, and the largest and most populous sea-port and manufacturing town in the United States. The distance of this city from the sea is about 60 miles across the land to the New-Jersey coast, and 120 miles by the ship channel of the Delaware.

(To be continued.)