Note 396 — Chapter XXV · 1764. THE RIOTERS MARCH ON PHILADELPHIA.
Reading edition
“Persons who were intimate now scarcely speak; or, if they happen to meet and converse, presently get to quarrelling. In short, harmony and love seem to be banished from amongst us.”
The above is an extract from the letter so often referred to. A fragment of the “Paxtoniad,” one of the poems of the day, is given in the Appendix. Few of the party pamphlets are worth quoting, but the titles of some of them will give an idea of their character: The Quaker Unmasked—A Looking-Glass for Presbyterians—A Battle of Squirt—Plain Truth—Plain Truth found to be Plain Falsehood—The Author of Plain Truth Stripped Stark Naked—Clothes for a Stark Naked Author—The Squabble, a Pastoral Eclogue—etc., etc.
The pamphlet called Plain Truth drew down the especial indignation of the Quakers, and the following extract from one of their replies to it may serve as a fair specimen of the temper of the combatants: “But how came you to give your piece the Title of Plain Truth; if you had called it downright Lies, it would have agreed better with the Contents; the Title therefore is a deception, and the contents manifestly false: in short, I have carefully examined it, and find in it no less than 17 Positive Lies, and 10 false Insinuations contained in 15 pages, Monstrous, and from what has been said must conclude that when you wrote it, Truth was banished entirely from you, and that you wrote it with a truly Pious Lying P——n Spirit, which appears in almost every Line!”
The peaceful society of Friends found among its ranks more than one such champion as the ingenious writer of the above. Two collections of these pamphlets have been examined, one preserved in the City Library of Philadelphia, and the other in that of the New York Historical Society.