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

An Answer to the Pamphlet Entitled "The Conduct of the Paxton Men" - 4

Presbytery? If this I say be his meaning (which rather think it is) it also proves him to be no politition, for had he been one of that Class, he would have concealed his Sentiments from the populace, and only devulged them to his dear Brethren. He sayeth I have no “other View in troubling you with this Letter, then to rescue the miserable Frontier people, who lately rose in Arms, from the infamy and odium thrown upon them.” I think that the Paxton people may be tired of their Advocate by this Time. They committed the worst of Crimes, and he is making bad worse; he is devulging the whole Scheme; he tells us it was to make better Times. If that be so it must be under the head I have already mentioned; but this Opinion is no policy; for if they have by that Act, ushered into their corrupt Minds, some small Glimps of fain’d pleasure, I think the Time is coming, when they’l wish they had never seen the Light of that Day, He goes on and tells us, “that whilst they were thus busied, and thus stripped of their Birth-Rights,---Israel and Joseph, two petty fellows, who ought to have no higher Claims than themselves, were permitted to Lord it over the Land, and in contempt of the Government and the express Orders of the Crown, forbidding them to hold private Treaties with the Indians.” Here is the want of policy; when he intended to exclaim against Israel and Joseph, he heaps the highest Ecomiums on them, when he sayeth they ought have have (observe) no higher Claims than themselves; which plainly points out, that they should have no higher Claims than their

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