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meaning? It is amazing to think that women who pretend to decency and reputation, whose brightest ornament ought to be modesty, should continue to abet, by their presence, so much unchastity as is to be found in the theatre. How few plays are acted which a modest woman can see, consistently with decency, in every part? And even when the plays are more reserved themselves, they are sure to be seasoned with something of this kind in the prologue or epilogue, the music between the acts, or in some scandalous farce with which the diversion is concluded. The power of custom and fashion is very great, in making people blind to the most manifest qualities and tendencies of things. There are ladies who frequently attend the stage, who if they were but once entertained with the same images in a private family, with which they are often presented there, would rise with indignation, and reckon their reputation ruined if ever they should return. With what consistency they gravely return to the same schools of lewdness, they themselves best know.

It ought to be considered, particularly with regard to the younger of both sexes, that, in the theatre, their minds must insensibly acquire an inclination to romance and extravagance,, and be unfitted for the sober and serious affairs of common life. Common or little things give no entertainment upon the stage, except when they are ridiculed. There must always be something grand, surprising, and striking. In comedies, when all obstacles are removed, and the marriage is agreed on, the play is done. This gives the mind such a turn, that it is apt to despise ordinary business as mean, or deride it as ridiculous. Ask a merchant whether he chooses that his apprentices should go to learn exactness and frugality from the stage. Or, whether he expects the most punctual payments from those whose generosity is strengthened there, by weeping over virtue in distress. Suppose a matron to be coming home from the theatre filled with the ideas that are there impressed upon the imagination-how low and contemptible do all the affairs of her family appear, and how much must she be disposed (besides the time already consumed) to forget or misguide them?

CHARACTER OF ACTORS.

The life of players is not only idle and vain, and therefore inconsistent with the character of a Christian, but it is still more directly and grossly criminal. Not only from the taste

of the audience must the prevailing tendency of all successful plays be bad, but in the very nature of the thing, the greatest part of the characters represented must be vicious. What, then, is the life of a player? It is wholly spent in endeavor-. ing to express the language, and exhibit a perfect picture, of the passions of vicious men. For this purpose, they must strive to enter into the spirit, and feel the sentiments proper to such characters.

Thus, their character has been infamous in all ages; just a living copy of that vanity, obscenity, and impiety which is to be found in the pieces which they represent. As the world has been polluted by the stage, so they have always been more eminently so, as it is natural to suppose, being the very cisterns in which this pollution is collected, and from which it is distributed to others.

Can it be lawful, then, in any one to contribute, in the least degree, to support men in this unhallowed employment? Is not the theatre truly and essentially, what it has been often called rhetorically, the school of impiety, where it is their very business to learn wickedness? and will a Christian, upon any pretended advantage to himself, join in this confederacy against God, and assist in endowing and upholding the dreadful seminary?

PRINCIPLES REGULATING MONEY.1

I will now sum up, in single propositions, the substance of what has been asserted, and I hope sufficiently proved, in the preceding discourse.

1. It ought not to be imputed to accident or caprice, that gold, silver, and copper formerly were, and the two first continue to be the medium of commerce; but to their inherent value, joined with other properties, that fit them for circulation. Therefore, all the speculations formed upon a contrary supposition, are inconclusive and absurd.

2. Gold and silver are far from being in too small quantity at present for the purpose of a circulating medium, in the commercial nations. The last of them, silver, seems rather to be in too great quantity, so as to become inconvenient for transportation.

This is at the close of his very able and learned “Essay on Money as a Medium of Commerce; with Remarks on the Advantages and Disadvantages of Paper admitted into general Circulation."

3. The people of every nation will get the quantity of these precious metals that they are entitled to by their industry, and no more. If by any accident, as plunder in war, or borrowing from other nations, or even finding it in mines, they get more, they will not be able to keep it. It will in a short time find its level. Laws against exporting the coin will not prevent this. Laws of this kind, though they are still in force in some nations supposed to be wise, yet are in themselves ridiculous. If you import more than you export, you must pay the balance, or give up the trade.

4. The quantity of gold and silver at any time in a nation is no evidence of national wealth, unless you take into consideration the way in which it came there, and the probability of its continuing.

5. No paper of any kind is, properly speaking, money. It ought never to be made a legal tender. It ought not to be forced upon anybody, because it cannot be forced upon everybody.

6. Gold and silver, fairly acquired, and likely to continue, are real national, as well as personal wealth. If twice as much paper circulates with them, though in full credit, particular persons may be rich by possessing it, but the nation in general is not.

7. The cry of the scarcity of money is generally putting the effect for the cause. No business can be done, say some, because money is scarce. It may be said with more truth, money is scarce, because little business is done. Yet their influence, like that of many other causes and effects, is reciprocal.

8. The quantity of current money, of whatever kind, will have an effect in raising the price of industry, and bringing goods dearer to market; therefore the increase of the currency in any nation, by paper, which will not pass among other nations, makes the first cost of everything they do greater, and of consequence, the profit less.

9. It is however possible, that paper obligations may so far facilitate commerce, and extend credit, as by the additional industry that they excite, to overbalance the injury which they do in other respects. Yet even the good itself may be overdone. Too much money may be emitted even upon loan; but to emit money any other way than upon loan, is to do all evil and no good.

10. The excessive quantity of paper emitted by the different States of America will probably be a loss to the whole. They cannot, however, take advantage of one another in that

way. That State which emits most will lose most, and rice

versa.

11. I can see no way in which it can do good but one, which is to deter other nations from trusting us, and thereby lessen our importations; and I sincerely wish that in that way it may prove in some degree a remedy for its own evils.

12. Those who refuse doubtful paper, and thereby disgrace it, or prevent its circulation, are not enemies, but friends to their country.

PHILLIS WHEATLEY PETERS,' 1755-1794.

In the year 1761 there was advertised to be sold, on one of the wharves of Boston, a lot of slaves just imported from the coast of Africa. A Mr. John Wheatley, whose wife wanted a young servant, went to the sale, and amongst the wretched group of more robust and healthy children, he observed one about seven years of age, slenderly

Some wonder may be expressed, and more, perhaps, may be felt, at my putting this poetess of African descent in a collection of American authors; and some may ask "Why did he do it?" I claim the privilege of answering this question by asking another-How could I omit it with justice? How many distinguished authors, scholars, statesmen, would be stricken from the list now called American, if those born on this side of the Atlantic only were included? Strike off first, the greatest statesman of the Revolution, the com. panion and bosom friend of Washington, and on whom his own strong arm in times of danger most leaned for support ;-for ALEXANDER HAMILTON was born in the West Indies, and did not come to this country till he was twice the age of Phillis Wheatley. Then strike off an illustrious signer of the Declaration of Independence, the learned president of the College of New Jersey, REV. DR. WITHERSPOON, who was forty-six years of age when he landed on our shores. And then, in the erasive process, strike off another renowned signer of the same instrument-him who, with his large fortune, and still larger credit, came to the aid of his country in her darkest hour, the great financier of the Revolution-ROBERT MORRIS. And where shall I stop? The truth is that man or that woman may be truly called American whose character is formed by American institutions, and whose GENIUS IS DEVELOPED ON AMERICAN SOIL. As to Phillis Wheatley Peters, I challenge any one to produce any poetry written in America before hers that is at all equal to it.

While I feel ashamed that my native State should ever have been engaged in the infamous traffic of slaves, I am proud to say that she was the least sinning in this respect of all the Atlantic States, while she proclaimed that the very fact of her adopting our excellent constitution must cause her at once to abolish, as she actually did, all slavery, as well as the slave-trade, throughout her domain.

formed, and suffering apparently from the change of climate and the miseries of the voyage. Touched to the heart by her interesting face and modest demeanor, he selected her, almost naked as she was, and brought her home to his wife to nurse and to rear. Mrs. Wheatley, with a true woman's heart, rejoiced in the selection her husband had made, and immediately gave her attention to the wants of the little stranger. In a short time, the effects of comfortable clothing, wholesome food, and kind treatment were clearly visible, and Mrs. Wheatley's daughter undertook to teach her to read and write. So astonishing was her progress that in sixteen months from the time of her arrival in this humane family she had so mastered the English language, to which before she was an utter stranger, as to read with ease any portion of the Bible, and to this attainment she soon added that of writing, which she acquired solely by her own unassisted efforts, and when but ten years old, wrote a letter to Samson Occum, an Indian minister, then in England.

In a very short time, so rapid was her progress in learning, that she became an object of general attention, and corresponded with several persons of great distinction.' As she grew up to womanhood, her progress and attainments kept pace with the promise of her earlier years. She attracted the notice of the literary characters of Boston, who supplied her with books, and encouraged the ripening of her intellectual powers. Mrs. Wheatley, too, did all she could to promote the happiness of the young poetess, and to aid her in the acquisition of knowledge, treating her as a child of the family, admitting her to her own table, and introducing her into the best society of Boston. But, notwithstanding all the honors and attentions she received, she still retained her original and native modesty of deport

She, some years after this, addressed a poem to General Washington while he was at his head-quarters at Cambridge, Mass., February, 1776. How did the illustrious man treat it? With scorn, as many of our modern, so-called statesmen would have done? No; he showed, in my estimation, his true greatness of mind in this, as much as in any one act of his life; he wrote her a most kind and respectful letter, of which the following is a portion: "I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me in the elegant lines you inclosed, and, however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyric, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your poetical talents, in honor of which, and as a tribute justly due to you, I would have published the poem had I not been apprehensive that, while I only meant to give the world this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of vanity. This, and nothing else, determined me not to give it place in the public prints.

"If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near head-quarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favored by the Muses, and to whom nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations.'

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