My Gout has at length left me, after five Months painful Confinement. It afforded me however the Leisure to read or hear read all the Packets of your various Newspapers, which you so kindly sent for my Amusement.

Mrs. W. has partaken of it; she likes to read the Advertisements; but she remarks some kind of Inconsistency in the announcing so many Diversions for almost every Evening in the Week, and such Quantities to be sold of expensive Superfluities, Fineries and Luxuries, just imported, in a Country, that at the same time fills its Papers with Complaints of Hard Times and Want of Money. I tell her that such Complaints are common to all Times and all Countries, and were made even in Solomon’s Time, when as we are told, Silver was as plenty in Jerusalem as the Stones in the Street, and yet even then there were People who grumbled, so as to incur this Censure from that knowing Prince, Say not thou that the former Times were better than these; for thou dost not enquire rightly concerning that matter.

But the Inconsistence that strikes me the most in that between the Name of your City, Philadelphia, Brotherly Love, and the Spirit of Rancour, Malice and Hatred that breathes in its News-Papers. For I learn from those Papers, that your State is divided into Parties, that each Party ascribes all the public Operations of the other to vicious Motives; that they do not even suspect one another of the smallest Degree of Honesty; that the antifederalists are such merely from the Fear of losing Powers, Places, or Emoluments which they have in Possession or in Expectation; that the Federalists are a Set of Conspirators, who aim at establishing a Tyranny over the Persons and Property of their Countrymen and to live in Splendor on the Plunder of the People. I learn too that your Justice of the Peace, tho’ chosen by their Neighbours, make a vilainous Trade of their Office, and promote Discord to augment Fees, and fleece their Electors; and that this would not be mended by placing the Choice in the Executive Council, who with interested or party Views are continually making as improper Appointments; witness a “petty Fidler, Sycophant and Scoundrel” appointed Judge of the Admiralty; an old Woman, and Fomentor of Sedition to be another of the Judges, and a Jeffries Chief Justice; &c &c. with two Harpies, the Comptroller and Naval Officers to prey upon the Merchants and deprive them of their Property by Force of Arms, &c. I am inform’d also by these Papers that your General Assembly tho’ the annual choice of the People, shows no Regard to their Rights, but from sinister Views or Ignorance makes Laws in direct Violation of the Constitution, to divest the Inhabitants of their Property and give it to Strangers and Intruders; and that the Council either fearing the Resentment of their Constituents or plotting to enslave them, had projected to disarm them, and given Orders for that purpose; and finally, that your President the unanimous joint Choice of the Council and and Assembly, is “an old Rogue,” who gave his Assent to the Federal Constitution merely to avoid refunding Money he had purloin’d from the United States. There is indeed a good deal of manifest Inconsistency in all this, and yet a Stranger seeing it in your own Prints, tho’ he does not believe it all, may probably believe enough of it to conclude, that Pennsylvania is peopled by a Set of the most unprincipled, rascally and quarrelsome Scoundrels upon the Face of the Globe. I have sometimes indeed suspected, that these Papers are the Manufacture of foreign Enemies among you, who write with the View of disgracing your Country, and making you appear contemptible and detestable all the World over: But then I wonder at the Indiscretion of your Printers in publishing such Writings! There is however one of your Inconsistencies that consoles me a little, which is, that tho’ living, you give one another the Characters of Devils, dead you are all Angels. It is delightful when any of you die, to read what good Husbands, good Fathers, good Friends, good Citizens and good Christians you were, concluding with a Scrap of Poetry that places you with Certainty every one in Heaven. So that I think Pennsylvania a good Country to dye in, tho’ a very bad one to live in.