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From the Miner's (Pa.) Journal.

REFLECTIONS ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THINGS.

The elements of anarchy throughout our country, are in violent commotion. The newspapers are filled with accounts of the triumphs of mob law. Outrages of every description, are beginning to thicken, and are committed every where with impunity. The present times furnish a striking picture of the truth, that liberty, that invaluable inheritance, which was won by the toils and sufferings, the blood and treasure of our immortal ancestors, is at best but a precarious boon, requiring constant vigilance, and every ready to fall a prey to the wild demons of anarchy. Licentiousness is at present engaged in a fierce and doubtful struggle with liberty. The issue of the contest is uncertain, unless the friends of good order and tranquility, those who respect and venerate the constitution and laws of their country, shall awaken from the false dream of security in which they are indulging. The confidence of all reflecting men is greatly impaired and weakened in the stability of our republican institutions, by recent events which have inflicted a heavier blow on the principles of freedom, than the lapse of a century. Nothing can be more fatally pernicious to the welfare and happiness of our country, than the triumph of mob law.

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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This article denounces what the writer calls "mob law." In 1835, when this was written, there were 147 riots throughout the United States. The year before there had been two large anti-abolition riots in New York and Philadelphia. Many of the riots were anti-abolition in nature, but there were also others including anti-Catholic, and even a three-day riot in Baltimore concerning the Bank of Maryland. The writer cautions that the liberty which the country had fought so hard for was at peril and could fall to anarchy. The Greenfield Gazette and Franklin Herald was the newspaper in Greenfield, Massachusetts, from June 26, 1827 to June 27, 1837. It changed its name to the Gazette & Mercury.

 

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"Reflections on the Present State of Things" article from Greenfield Gazette and Franklin Herald newspaper

printer   Greenfield Gazette and Franklin Herald
date   Sep 8, 1835
location   Greenfield, Massachusetts
width   4.0"
height   5.5"
process/materials   printed paper, ink
item type   Periodicals/Newspaper
accession #   #L05.118


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See Also...

"Disgraceful Outrage" article on the Ursuline Convent from the Boston Courier newspaper

"Gilt Edged Paper" article tells of a death threat to the editor of The Emancipator in the Gazette and Mercury newspaper

"Geo. Thompson in Springfield" article from the Boston Courier newspaper


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