Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

MR. FENNO,

I little expected, when I handed you a few remarks under the signature of Civis, upon a very indecent publication, signed SAMUEL F. BRADFORD, that I should have drawn forth the greatest insult and the most atrocious threats, against two much respected members of the society of Friends; yet such is the fact which draws me reluctant forward again to expose impudence unparalleled, and to sooth falsehood the most unprincipled.

The whole town has been given to understand that Mr. Bradford well knows the author of Civis--that he is either one or other of two gentlemen, whose names are unreservedly mentioned by him, and against whom he has openly denounced vengeance. He has already silenced him once, he says, and will do it again. The reader will perhaps think this a tolerable stretch of assurance for a modest young man--but even this is not all: In order to reduce the two objects of his suspicion to one, he goes to one of the abovementioned gentlemen, and accuses him to his teeth of writing my wrath-exciting little piece. On being answered by this respectable man in the negative, he proceeds to run out against the publication he had just accused this gentleman of writing, as scurrilous and abusive--thereby audaciously imputing to him a gross offence. My blood boils when I think on this outrageous insolence; and I am impelled to tell Mr. Bradford, in plain terms, that such conduct merited an immediate and exemplary chastisement; from which the principles of the insulted party, perhaps, alone protected him.

Of what interest is it to you, Sir, whether I live between Walnut and Chestnut, or between Walnut and Spruce streets? Or whether I live between neither? All these questions are not at all ad rem. I accused you of abusing and alarming the town by your false statement of deaths; and, (after being detected and exposed) of insulting and traducing a respectable body of men, merely because they were the instruments of undeceiving their fellow-citizens.

I should not have troubled your readers, Mr. Fenno, with these remarks, had Mr. Bradford, as there was reason to expect, apologized to the public for the gross deception practiced upon them, and his wanton abuse of their officers. Instead of that apology, he has added to his offence, by conduct so novel and extraordinary, as imperiously to demand, in a particular manner from me, this public reprehension, which I cannot better conclude than by admonishing Mr. Bradford to curb, in future, his excessive conceit, from leading him to acts of so gross indecorum, as those of which he has given me occasion to complain.

CIVIS.