Norfolk Gazette And Publick Ledger

PENNSYLVANIA POLITICKS.

From The American Daily Advertiser.

TO THE FREEMEN OF PENNSYLVANIA.

Fellow-Citizens,

The period which is now approaching for the stated exertion of your rights, in the appointment of suitable persons to manage your interests in the publick offices of the state, is no common occasion for the exercise of this constitutional authority: it will implicate your approbation, and involve the perpetuity, of that political system, which was framed in an era of tranquility, and has been approved by fifteen years of publick prosperity, and private happiness.

You have been called upon, by the democratick conferees, to give your votes for such men as will favour the call of a convention, for the following express objects.

"To reduce, and define, the enormous powers and patronage of the governour;

To abridge the period for which senators are elected;

To make the judges effectively responsible, and to render justice speedy, easy, and cheap;

To explain the ambiguous parts of the constitution; and

To provide a mode of amending such parts as experience may hereafter point out as defective."

These my fellow citizens, of every description (for your present addresser is a man of no party, whose patriotick affections can embrace you all,) these are the objects for which your are solicited to commit your constitutional rights to the mercy of untried speculations--to toss up with political gamesters for gain or loss--for more or less of that freedom and happiness, of which you have been so long in undisturbed possession.

"Men who undertake considerable things (says a great statesman) ought to give us ground to presume ability. But the physician of the state, who, not satisfied with the cure of distempers, undertakes to regenerate constitutions, ought to shew uncommon powers. Some very unusual appearances of wisdom ought to display themselves on the face of the design of those who appeal to no practice, and who copy after no model."

"All those (continues the same profound politician) who have affections which lead them to the conservation of civil order, would recognize, even in its cradle, the child, as legitimate, which has been produced from those principles of cogent expediency to which all just governments owe their birth, and on which they justify their continuance. But they will be late and reluctant in giving any sort of countenance to the operations of a power, which has derived its birth from no law and no necessity."

The probable expediency, nay the possible urgency, of the proposed measure, is but faintly insisted on by the conferees themselves; for they expressly declare that if the governour had been regardful of the publick will, &c. &c. "the constitution might have remained without delay an analysis and the people undisturbed under its administration."

It is thus, my fellow citizens, that, relinquishing constitutional remedies for the abuses of power, you are incited to fall foul of the constitution itself. These state empirics are staunch practitioners—they are not afraid to cut up the patient for the sake of an experiment!

Whatever it may be to the leaders of parties (whether federal, democratick, or neutral) to the good people of Pennsylvania this is not a question of men, but of measures—It is not an option between Thomas M Kean, and Simon Snyder; but a choice between actual and speculative good, and imaginary amelioration.

The common sense of the country which has been insidiously, and for selfish ends, divided into parties, will pause, I trust, upon the momentuous alternative—perhaps it will shake off the trammels of influence; and prove, by an independent vote for the constitutional ticket, that the freemen of Pennsylvania are not so intoxicated with prosperity as not to know that we are well.

PHILADELPHIENSIS.

As the above reflections upon this important crisis are addressed to the publick, at large, the printers in the different parts of the state, are requested to give them circulation.