Gazette Of The United States

DOMESTIC ARTICLES
CHARLESTON, Jan. 13.

Extract of a letter from Philadelphia, Dec. 24, 1789.

A reflecting mind will take pleasure in contemplating the different situations of men (with respect to freedom of opinion, without penalty) in England and America.—In England, no dissenter from the established religion is excused from paying a tax to the support of such establishment. In America, the civil power leaves the conscience perfectly free, and a man may adhere to any sect he pleases, or dissent from all, without danger of subjecting himself to the vexatious process of ecclesiastical courts and the censures of episcopal tyrants. I am informed from the best authority, that the Quakers in England only have paid, during this year towards the support of the national church, no less than five thousand one hundred pounds sterling, and in Ireland one thousand two hundred and forty seven pounds. Add to this that very little regard is paid to the pacific principles of the Quakers, several of them having been imprisoned last year at Braintree and elsewhere, for not having provided substitutes in the county militia; others have been shut up in jail by the ecclesiastical courts on account of tithes, and (unless contributions are made) no one knows when they will get out of prison. In my opinion a forced maintenance of the clergy is evidently contradictory to, as well as utterly inconsistent with, the mild spirit, benevolence and dignity of the gospel, which has bestowed its bounty freely upon all. But time (it is to be hoped) will eradicate these prejudices and abuses in England and Ireland, where at present, (as Hudibras says)
"Every village is a see
As well as Rome, and must maintain
A Tythe-pig metropolitan,
More haughty and severe in's place
Than Gregory or Boniface."
Thanks be to the goodness of Heaven which has inclined the great body of the people of this country, to put matters of a religious nature upon a different footing.—The Quakers in this neighborhood, who in 1777, gave such a hearty welcome to Sir W. Howe, had not a proper sense of these matters, or they would have acted in a very different manner from what they did; and not have declined to share with the rest of the Americans the burthen of the common defence.