On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    tion , that C . in his statements respecting the Illinois , is utterly unworthy of credit . * The letter of R . F ., ( Mon . Repos . p . 453 , ) his letter inserted in your last , together with the letters from three persons of the Society of Friends ,

    in the same number , afford additional evidence of the truth of nay assertions . The anonymous writer adds , " Where B . lives , it is acknowledged by all , society is worse than it is here ; for we are certainly making efforts to moralize our neighbours , or drive the worst from us : while , from their q uarrels . from us ; whilefrom their quarrels

    , , they are promoting every bad passion , and giving an example which will infallibly keep them behind us for years to come . " I have to request of I . W ., after reading this paragraph , to refer to that part of his friend ' s letter on the state of society where he resides , and that he would then look over the letter

    of R . F . and the letters in your last , already referred to , and , even without the aid of additional evidence I shall presently produce , I can scarcely doubt but he will blush on reflecting that he has , in an evil hour , not " amused , " but abused your readers , by imposing on them trash so utterly contemptible !

    The differences which have subsisted at the Illinois , and which the anonymous writer hag indecently represented as quarrels promoting every bad passion , and , as falsely as indecently ,

    degrading society to a worse state than at the wretched spot he has chosen for his residence , the public have nothing to do with , and the parties more immediately interested have very prudently avoided all mention of them in their

    various communications to the public ,. I beg leave , however , to lay before your readers an extract of a letter I received last year from Mr . Birkbeck , and which affords additional evidence of the ignorance , or something worse than ignorance , of the correspondent of I . W .

    " TVanborough , English Prairie , Illinois , August 29 , 1819 . € C We are going on here even better than we had a right to expect . All , and more than 1 have called up for my own pleasant anticipation , is coming to pass ;

    Flower's Letters ; Birkbeck ' s two betters , 1819 ,

    Untitled Article

    but you are too early in your expectation of fruits from our settlement . It is a great matter for a colony to have removed in twelve months across the Atlantic , and established itself one thousand miles

    inland . This we have done ; but we have to ask another year before you call on us , for what has been done in the Illinois after tried experiments . * When we assure you that we find the soil good , ( and it is better than I believed it on my first observations , ) the climate and situation agreeable and salubrious , it is as much as you ought to look for on arrival .

    " I have sent a little packet for publication , containing a short reply to Mr . Cobbett ' s abusive nonsense , and two other things . The calumnies which have been published against us have not made us very uneasy , because we were all the time in the act of confuting them . The

    difference between some of us , which has been so greedily seized upon , has as much to do with the Cape of Good Hope as with our settlement ; but it is food for scandal . In due season I hope the public will receive from the pen of your brother ,

    statistical accounts of our colony , which will be gratifying to good men . I may ( as on the present occasion ) be occasionally aroused to self-defence by some gross , personal attack , but I am anxious that others should give the result to the public of this grand undertaking .

    " It is with the most sincere delight I read a confirmation from your pen of what I had traced in various accounts of the state of the continent of Europe , * that the power of maintaining abuses and oppressions is weakened at the root by

    the increase of real knowledge of the principles of political and religious institutions , and by the general determination to reduce those principles to practice . What a grand epoch in the history of mankind was the establishment of this truly representative Government ! €€

    Our settlement is already tolerably rich in books , and a disposition prevails * This alludes to some observations I had made on the state of Europe during a six months' residence in the Netherlands , principally at Brussels , in the years 1818 , 1819 . When I consider the glorious revolutions which have since taken

    place , 1 , with the most heartfelt satisfaction , adopt the language of Mr . B . respecting the Illinois , <« all , and more than I had called up for my own pleasant anticipation , is comipg to pass ; " and I cannot help adding , that my daily and earnest prayers to my God are , that revolutions equally glorious may follow in quick succession .

    Untitled Article

    664 Mr . B * Flower ' s Remarks on Letters lately received

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1820, page 664, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2494/page/36/