Digital Paxton: Digital Collection, Critical Edition, and Teaching Platform

An Address to the Rev. Dr. Alison - 5

And it is this officious, mischeivous and ambitious Man, against whom alone you have heretofore made the Charges, which you now impute to the Society, of holding Treaties and Correspondence with the Indians, and bestowing on them Tomhawks in Time of War,—with how much Justice and Truth, you and he alone can determine. The Dexterity and Success with which you and your Party have used the Follies of this Man, to abuse and discredit the Society he unhappily belongs to, are now fatally notorious. The Task of reciting all the Mischiefs which he has brought on the Society, the Disgrace he has, and is continually subjecting them to, his wild Schemes to promote his own Importance, the Numbers his absurd Conduct has driven from the Society, and the other Effects of his fickle, yet headstrong impetuous Temper, would take up more Time than I can at present spare: I shall therefore only add, that Confusion and Discredit have constantly attended the Affairs of those who have had any Connections with him; and that it would have been happy for the Society, and the Liberties of Pennsylvania, if they had never had any Fellowship with a Person of his Disposition: For your Malevolence will never want a plausible Pretext for Misrepresentation and Slander against the whole Society, while he continues a Member, and your Consciences will permit you to aggravate the Follies of an Individual into heinous Crimes, and to impute them to the Society in general, who either never thought of them or gave them Opposition.

I shall now leave this high Charge against the Quakers, which, without one probable Circumstance attending it, rested solely on your meer Assertion. And how much Credit ought to be given to that, I shall make evident before I conclude.

THERE are some Men who, determined to succeed in their Designs, are utterly regardless of Truth, and so indifferent to the Shame of being detected in a Falsehood; that they never reflect whether the Facts they affirm are

Contents of this annotation: