Gazette Of The United States

FROM THE CONNECTICUT JOURNAL.

MESS'RS PRINTERS.

THE writer, who, in your last paper, attempted to ridicule the pompous account of the Western Territory, has dealt so much between jest and earnest, that one is in the event at a loss for his object.

Your readers may be pleased with a fine picture, even though it have no original in nature, but when the proportions are horrid and impossible, they must be disgusting—These anecdotes might figure among the Arabian Night's Entertainments—but among us can never be entitled to a symptom of credibility.

When Dives was in torment, he kindly sent to his brethren to shift their course—happy for us, if the desperate settlers of the Georgian Territory were as humanely disposed.

To people acquainted with new countries I need only observe, that with all possible advantages from nature, the first settlers must have a Benjamin's mess of the curse of Adam, before they can receive the fruit of their labours.

Deprived of the blessings of neighbourhood and social intercourse, at a distance from markets, in constant fear from savages, they may pick strawberries larger than those of Chili—may reflect that in the latitude of their lands lie many delightful countries on the other Continent —Their imagination may represent, Age resuming Youth —all the Seasons resolved into one eternal Spring —the waters of a modern Bethesda, healing with a preter christian rapidity—the most painful disorders flying at the first draught—rivers clear as crystal stocked with all kind of fish—they may conceive of trees reaching far above the atmosphere, with diameters like the planet Mars—these bearing spontaneously, all manner of fruits, in abundance, transcending calculation—A second and much improved edition of Eden may please their mendacious fancies, but call these poor wretched beings to their bitter, barren reality.

Alas! "The apprehension of the good gives but the greater feelings to the worse ;—

"Who can hold a fire in his hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus? or cloy the

"hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast"

These ravaging accounts have been foisted into public notice by the emissaries of land jobbers—
Three men have bought the lands at a very small price, and are very much disposed to get your valuable farms in exchange for them. Various insidious arts have been employed to ensnare and betray the unwary. Let me counsel you my countrymen, to stay at home, content with that support which honest industry will secure to you in any populated part of the United States.

Your emigration to these lands will be as injurious to your country, as emigration to another planet. In a political view, these lands may perhaps be made productive of money, if sold abroad, and reserved for foreign emigrants—but in a commercial and agricultural view, they are at this moment very injurious—they open a resort for all who would escape from debt and from industry—they weaken the effect of penal laws throughout the Union, by receiving and protecting their just victims. There no law reaches, no cure descends—but in lieu of them a complication of miseries necessarily attendant on settlers in a new territory. Convinced I am, that if those lands were overflowed by the lakes—or sunk in the ocean—or turned into a desert—we should be a richer people.

On the subject of the immense compliments to our Western Territory, I pledge myself, (if fairly challenged, under this signature,) to prove, that the accounts have been, for the most part, absolutely false and insidious. Stay, then, my countrymen, in your honest callings, and never be caught standing like Shakespeare's blacksmith with suspended hammer, and out-stretch'd mouth, wallowing a tailor's news.

A REPUBLICAN.