The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

ON SWEARING.

To say nothing of the impiety of profane swearing, it is a most unmanly and useless vice, and has a most malignant aspect on the interest of civil society. Profaneness is as poor an evidence of wit and sense of courage and of good breeding, as it is of solid goodness. The dregs of mankind are as great adepts in this art as the pretended gentlemen. And as to the tendency which profane swearing has to introduce perjury, and otherwise injure the interest of society, it is thus expressed by a lively writer : " If the devil himself was to study and contrive a way for the disarming of mankind of that natural reverence and veneration they have for oaths, and bringing them without much scruple of conscience to swear any thing, at any time, whether true or false, as their own interest might tempt them to it, he could not pitch upon a more effectual one than this. to make oaths familiar to them upon all occasions, and to bring them into customary use in ordinary conversation. That man, who can swear an hundred times a day, when there is no reason for it, I cannot imagine what regard he can have for an oath, when he is called upon to give it, where there is reason."