Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

By this Day's Mail.

NEW-YORK, October 26.

In the year 1635, in the infancy of the English settlements in America, the general court of Massachusetts ordered that brass musket balls should pass for farthings.

Winthrop's Journal p. 80.

It is recommended to our government to pay tribute to France in this old Massachusetts coin.

When a printing press was first established in that colony, the first thing printed was the Freeman's oath. A little superstition will say, the descendants of such ancestors will not be slaves!

The first press was set up at Cambridge, in Massachusetts, in 1638, by one Day, at the charge of a Mr. Glover; this was the year in which Harvard college was founded.

The second work printed was an almanack, by one Pierce, a mariner—and the third was the psalms newly turned into meter.

It is remarkable how long the first settlers in America proceeded in their civil concerns without lawyers. In 1637, almost 57 years from the first settlement, there were but two attorneys in Massachusetts. The noted Randolph, the Crown Agent, wrote a letter to a friend in England in January 1687, in which he has the following passages, "I have wrote you, the want we have of two or three honest attorneys, if any such thing in nature. We have but two; one is Mr. West's creature, came with him from New-York, and drives all before him, he takes extravagant fees, and for want of more, the country cannot avoid coming to him."

We suspect this is the last time, the people of America have had occasion to complain of the quantity of attorneys.