Portland Gazette, And Maine Advertiser

Punishment for turning Shakers!—The Legislature of New-York anxiously devotes its paternal attention to the augmentation of the wealth and resources of the State. Their Insolvent Law is so liberal, that thousands from other States, who wish to shake off the load of debts, take up their abode there, and become incorporated into their political family. As another temptation to remove to New-York, their last Legislature enacted, that "whenever any married person shall hereafter attach him or herself to the Society of Shakers, he or she shall be taken or deemed to be civilly dead to all intents and purposes in the law," and that the Bond of Matrimony shall be dissolved.

This Punishment will probably fill the abodes of the Shakers with proselytes, as it is an old maxim, that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. Many discontented pairs will supplicate for the benediction of being furnished in this way. The Mansions of the Shakers will become, what Mr. Jefferson would call, "an asylum for oppressed humanity, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long lost liberty".