Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

Extract of a letter from Germantown, March 5th 1798.

" The extreme badness of our roads will plead my excuse for not attending to our appointment, Scarce a day has passed for a fortnight without one or more accidents of carriages, stalled, upsetting, breaking down, or laming horses &c. &c. We have perhaps as good stages as any on the continent, and what is of more consequence, sober, careful drivers; and yet neither of them have escaped accidents- why the legislature with-hold from us a law that would give us a Turnpike (at a time when the legislature of a sister state are making exertions for this purpose that does them credit) is for them to determine, suffice it to observe, that if the law at present before the house for extending it to Reading should pass upon the same plan as when confined to the 12 mile stone, in which the very principles of turnpikes were attempted to be destroyed, and were very much mutilated, we shall have the law without ever having the road made. It is believed that this extension is a mere finesse to defeat the business; I think this is warranted from the conduct of the member from F in the commencement of it, when he observed that he considered them as an evil, consequently voted against it when confined to the 12 mile stone; nevertheless, he wished to extend this evil by voting to go to Reading, no doubt with a view of defeating it- he has a peculiar aptness at applying principles, he will therefore excuse the inhabitants of this place in thinking it a very dirty one, that would keep them always riding through the mud. As to the opposition of the member from M-a-, it was no more than was expected from him; to be sure he made a very elaborate apology for his conduct when he opened his budget, in which he stated he had a number of friends to some of whose judgment he paid great deference, and that one of them advised his taking off the keen edge of his opposition, this certainly must mean something unfair, unmanly or improper, or it would not have excited the attention of his friends. How far he has taken this good advice; his motion for a postponement or in other words a total defeat, speaks for itself: his views it is said (but whether true or not we cannot actually define) are for defeating this business to preserve his popularity (which it is thought he would part with, with the same reluctance that a miser would with the last piece of gold his eyes were ever to behold) and thereby have a good chance of getting into Congress. If a good stock of assurance, arrogance and loquacity with a horrid look speaking? every thing to his own satisfaction will be a recommendation to a seat in that honorable house, and he should obtain it, I have no doubt but that the luminary of Vermont would be totally eclipsed."