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Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of Our Public Affairs - 9

dignity and Contempt. Not a Magistrate dares wag a Finger towards discovering or apprehending the Delinquents, (we must not call them Murderers). They assemble again, and with Arms in their Hands, approach the Capital.---The Government truckles, condescends to cajole them, and drops all Prosecution of their Crimes; while honest Citizens, threatened in their Lives and Fortunes, flie the Province, as having no Confidence in the Publick Protection. We are daily threatened with more of these Tumults; and the Government, which in its Distress call’d aloud on the sober Inhabitants to come with Arms to its Assistance, now sees those who Afforded that Assistance daily libell’d, abus’d, and menac’d by its Partizans for so doing; whence it has little Reason to expect such Assistance on another Occasion:---In this Situation, what is to be done? By what Means is that Harmony between the two Branches of Government to be obtain’d, without which the internal Peace of the Province can not be well secured? One Project is, to turn all Quakers out of the Assembly; or, by obtaining more Members for the Back Counties, to get a Majority in, who are not Quakers.---This, perhaps, is not very difficult to do; and more Members for those Counties may, on other Accounts, be proper; but I much question if it would answer this End, as I see among the Members, that those who are not Quakers, and even those from the Back Counties, are as hearty and unanimous in opposing what they think Proprietary Injustice, as the Quakers themselves, if not more so.-----Religion has happily nothing to do with our present Differences, tho’ great Pains is taken to lug it into the Squab-

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