For SALE:--A black girl 20 years old, and 8 to serve.
Ditto 17 and 11 ditto.
Ditto 13 and 15 ditto, from the country.
Ditto 18 and 10 ditto.
Ditto 13 and 15 ditto.
A black boy 16 and 15 ditto, &c. &c.
To BIND:--White boys 11, 12, 13, &c. years of age.
White girls 8, 11, 12, &c.
Thus in free Pensilvania are blacks positively sold for a limited
period, and though the law does not allow the purchaser the power of
life and death over this sort of slave, yet to all other intents and
purposes he is in as complete subjection as any slave in Virginia or
Kentucky.
We have lately attended service at the churches of the Anabaptists, the
Swedenborgians, &c.--Contemplating the various sects of religion in the
United States, men will be pleased or otherwise, according to their
private sentiments, to see the people on a Sunday quietly moving to the
places of worship belonging to their several persuasions, without the
least symptom of disrespect or rancorous spirit towards each other;
thus forming an exception to the rest of the globe.--Whether such a
state of religion will long continue, or whether, professing the same
end (happiness hereafter,) {178} they may at length unite in the same
means, one form of religion, time only will demonstrate: there are
indeed people who seem to be of opinion that it will end in no religion
at all; and I must confess thus much, that though theoretically it is
certainly pleasing to contemplate religion free from state trammels, and
each man walking before his God as his unbiassed conscience shall
dictate, yet, as religion ought to influence men's conduct in the world,
and "a tree is known by its fruit," it would be satisfactory to
perceive, as the result of such religious liberty, more probity in the
every day dealings between man and man than I have witnessed in the
United States. While they talk of the moral and religious principle; of
true liberty, honesty, &c. their actions belie their words, and make
them appear a nation of unprincipled atheists; by the bye, a description
of people perhaps more general over the world than we might be inclined
to allow; people, who outwardly profess belief in a Creator and future
Judge of our actions, yet whose daily acts contradict their professions.
But to return to America, where integrity is at so low an ebb at
present, that the nearest relative or friend can scarcely be safely
trusted. One instance of baseness and ingratitude, among the many, I
will relate. A man some time ago became insolvent--_retired_ for the
{179} usual period of five or six weeks, during which time he obtained
signatures of release from his creditors, and came out whitewashed: one
would naturally suppose that at least towards these men he would feel a
debt of gratitude as well as of money due, and he had soon an
opportunity of shewing it; for one of them, to whom he had been most
indebted, in his turn got into difficulties,--and what followed--the
scoundrel seized the occasion by the help of chicanery to turn his
former creditor into the street and sold up his goods! Can either a
religious or moral principle prevail where such things are _commonly_
perpetrated?--Can the laws be good?--Can the government be efficient?
Can a country last where such things pass as clever strokes of practice,
and the most successful swindler is praised as the _smartest_ fellow?
"Such things are;" and while they are, they furnish ground for such
philippics as the following; which I will insert, not because any calm
unprejudiced person or one _not writing for preferment_ can agree with
the pen of gall, but in the hope that America aroused at such anathemas,
may exert her better self, give vigour to her laws, and blot out these
foul deeds from the page of her history. Speaking of the principle of
honour, the writer expresses himself thus:--"Honour alone {180} will
indeed never make a great nation, but it will always preserve it from
dwindling down into thorough contempt. It has done much more for France
than ever virtue did. Without this semi-heroic principle she would have
been detestable indeed. I say not that she was ever anything very
desirable to boast of with it. America in this respect stands insulated
from all the world. She has neither a spark of true magnanimity about
her, nor any grace or colouring of it. She is equally destitute of
honesty and honour, of substance and semblance. She set off without an
established religion, and has now pretty well prepared herself for
needing none."
In another place he writes thus, "there is no saying what this same
America may turn out in the lapse of ages, or how far that unprincipled
Oligarchy may extend her growing plagues into futurity, which, at
present, exhibits the young serpents crawling out of their beds of
venom in every direction where the heavens may smile, or the air freshly
blow upon them, &c."[62]
Such sentiments as these, from a man professing himself a minister of
"the meek and lowly Jesus," are little calculated to fascinate and
render {181} any people the more inclined to a church establishment.
_February 3d._ What transitions of temperature!--the frost yesterday was
severe; the Schuylkill and even the Delaware frozen over, and skating
the order of the day; the thermometer at ten degrees below
freezing:--last night a heavy mild rain has fallen, and at mid-day now
the thermometer is at 40°.