The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

The following beautiful addresses to the citizens of the United States of America, was written by the Honorable David Ramsay, Esq. of South-Carolina, and is copied from the 2d vol. of his history of the American Revolution. It contains much genuine information and a fund of wholesome advice to every American.

O CITIZENS of the United States! you have a well balanced constitution, established by general consent, which is an improvement on all republican forms of government heretofore established. It possesses the good qualities of monarchy, but without its vices. The wisdom and stability of an aristocracy, but without the insolence of hereditary masters. The freedom and independence of a popular assembly acquainted with the wants and wishes of the people, but without the capacity of doing those mischiefs which result from uncontrolled power in one assembly.

The end and object of it is public good. If you are not happy, it will be your own fault. No knave or fool can plead an hereditary right to sport with your property or liberties. Your laws and your lawgivers must all proceed from yourselves. You have the experience of nearly six thousand years to point out the rocks on which former republics have been dashed to pieces. Learn wisdom from misfortunes. Cultivate justice, both public and private. No government will or can endure, which does not protect the rights of its subjects.

Unless such efficient regulations are adopted, as will secure property as well as liberty, one revolution will follow another. Anarchy, Monarchy or Despotism will be the consequence. By just laws, and the faithful execution of them, public and private credit will be restored, and the restoration of credit will be a mine of wealth to this young country. It will make a fund for agriculture, commerce and manufactures, which will soon enable the United States to claim an exalted rank among the nations of the earth.

Such are the resources of your country, and so trifling are your debts, compared with your resources, that proper systems, wisely planned and faithfully executed, will soon fill your extensive territory with inhabitants, and give you the command of such ample capitals, as will enable you to run the career of national greatness, with advantages equal to the oldest kingdoms of Europe. What they have been slowly growing to, in the course of near two thousand years, you may hope to equal within one century.

If you continue under one government, built on the solid foundations of public justice, and public virtue, there is no point of national greatness to which you may not aspire with a well-founded hope of speedily attaining it. Cherish and support a reverence for government, and cultivate union between the East and the South, the Atlantic and the Mississippi. Let the greatest good of the greatest number be the pole star of your public and private deliberations.

Shun wars; they beget debt, add to the common vices of mankind, and produce others, which are almost peculiar to themselves. Agriculture, manufactures and commerce, are your proper business. Seek not to enlarge your territory by conquest. It is already sufficiently extensive. You have ample scope for the employment of your most active minds, in promoting your own domestic happiness.

Maintain your own rights, and let others remain in quiet possession of theirs. Avoid discord, faction, luxury, and the other vices which have been the bane of commonwealths. Cherish and reward the philosophers, the statesmen and the patriots, who devote their talents and time, at the expense of their private interests, to the toils of enlightening and directing their fellow-citizens, and thereby rescue citizens and rulers of republics, from the common and too often merited charge of ingratitude.

Practise industry, frugality, temperance, moderation, and the whole lovely train of republican virtues. Banish from your borders the liquid fire of the West-Indies, which, while it entails poverty and disease, prevents industry, and foments private quarrels. Venerate the plough, the hoe, and all the implements of agriculture. Honor the men who with their own hands maintain their families, and raise up children who are inured to toil and capable of defending their country.

Reckon the necessity of labour not among the curses, but the blessings of life. Your towns will probably ere long be ingulphed in luxury and effeminacy. If your liberties and future prospects depended on them, your career of liberty would probably be short; but a great majority of your country must, and will be yeomanry, who have no other dependence than on Almighty God for his usual blessing on their daily labour.

From the great excess of the number of such independent farmers in these States, over and above all other classes of inhabitants, the long continuance of your liberties may be reasonably presumed. Let the hapless African sleep undisturbed on his native shore, and give over wishing for the extirpation of the ancient proprietors of this land. Universal justice is universal interest.

The most enlarged happiness of one people, by no means requires the degradation or destruction of another. It would be more glorious to civilize one tribe of savages, than to extirpate or expel a score. There is territory enough for them and for you. Instead of invading their rights, promote their happiness, and give them no reason to curse the folly of their fathers, who suffered yours to sit down on a soil which the common Parent of us both previously assigned to them: but above all, be particularly careful that your own descendants do not degenerate into savages.

Diffuse the means of education, and particularly of religious instructions through your remotest settlements. To this end, support and strengthen the hands of public teachers, and especially of worthy clergymen. Let your voluntary contributions confute the dishonorable position, that religion cannot be supported but by compulsory establishments.

Remember that there can be no political happiness without liberty; that there can be no liberty without morality; and that there can be no morality without religion. It is now your turn to figure on the face of the earth, and the annals of the world. You possess a country which in less than a century will probably contain fifty millions of inhabitants.

You have with great expense of blood and treasure, rescued yourselves and your posterity from the domination of Europe. Perfect the good work you have begun, by forming such arrangements and institutions as bid fair for insuring to the present and future generations the blessings for which you have successfully contended. May the Almighty Ruler of the universe who raised you to independence, and given you a place among the nations of the earth, make the American Revolution an Era in the history of the world, remarkable for the progressive increase of human happiness.