The New Hampshire Gazette

To the PUBLIC.

It is certainly for the nation's interest, to keep in with the blessed God: for as all things are apparently, and will be eternally, under his controul, they best consult for their own safety and happiness (separate from other obligations to be religious) who make it their constant, invariable aim to please him; and the more wisdom and influence any man possesses, he is so much the more inexcusable, if he neglects this most obvious point of reason. It is therefore most passionately to be wished, that contentions about precedence and superiority, might give place to unanimous, and the most animated endeavours for the suppression of vice, which only can undermine our national wealth; and the natural tendency of which is, to give rational beings chaff instead of Bread, to eat. If parents would endeavour to tincture every opening ray of reason in their tender offspring with sentiments of virtue and religion; if masters would refuse to continue in their service persons who are guilty of profane swearing & swearing, and drunkenness, (which I am sure, from observation, might in most cases be done, if resolutely intended); if magistrates of every rank would, by their authority and example, suppress Sabbath-breaking, and look every daring vice out of countenance; if ministers of every profession were honoured or discountenanced, according as they did, or did not, lay out themselves to promote the ends of their sacred office; and the great would condescend to honour themselves by spreading virtue around them, among the obsequious crowd, in city and country: pleasure, honour and peace would then triumph in every corner of the land, and joy wipe away all the sullen traces of grief from every countenance. Then might the true God of war be invoked with confidence; and victory would hover no more in doubtful uncertainty, o'er the embattled plain, but mark out the favorites of heaven with a high hand: our prosperity would then be something more than a name, viz. a vital enlivening substance, felt in every joyous breast. Virtue is the best system of politics: this, my dear fellow-subjects, is the sure path to national honour and dignity: so reason says: and does not every responsive conscience attest and vindicate the venerable dictate?