information.  The proceedings of our public bodies, the progress of the public mind on interesting questions, the casualties which happen among our private friends, and whatever is interesting to yourself and family, will always be anxiously received by me.  There is one circumstance in the work you were concerned in, which has not yet come to my knowledge; to wit, How far westward from Fort Pitt, does the western boundary of Pennsylvania pass, and where does it strike the Ohio?  The proposition you mention from Mr. Anderson, on the purchase of tobacco, I would have made use of, but that I have engaged the abuses of the tobacco trade on a more general scale.  I confess their redress is by no means certain; but till I see all hope of removing the evil by the roots desperate, I cannot propose to prune its branches.

I returned but three or four days ago, from a two months’ trip to England.  I traversed that country much, and own, both town and country fell short of my expectations.  Comparing it with this, I found a much greater proportion of barrens, a soil, in other parts, not naturally so good as this, not better cultivated, but better manured, and therefore more productive.  This proceeds from the practice of long leases there, and short ones here.  The laboring people here, are poorer than in England.  They pay about one half their produce in rent; the English, in general, about a third.  The gardening, in that country, is the article in which it surpasses all the earth.  I mean their pleasure gardening.  This, indeed, went far beyond my ideas.  The city of London, though handsomer than Paris, is not so handsome as Philadelphia.  Their architecture is in the most wretched style I ever saw, not meaning to except America, where it is bad, nor even Virginia, where it is worse than in any other part of America which I have seen.  The mechanical arts in London are carried to a wonderful perfection.  But of these I need not speak, because, of them my countrymen have unfortunately too many samples before their eyes.  I consider the extravagance which has seized them, as a more baneful evil than toryism was during the war.  It is the more so, as the example is set by the best and most amiable characters among us.  Would a missionary appear, who would make frugality the basis of his religious system, and go through the land, preaching it up as the only road to salvation, I would join his school, though not generally disposed to seek my religion out of the dictates of my own reason, and feelings of my own heart.  These things have been more deeply impressed on my mind, by what I have heard and seen in England.  That nation hate us, their ministers hate us, and their King, more than all other men.  They have the impudence to avow this, though they acknowledge our trade important to them.  But they think, we cannot prevent our countrymen from bringing that into their laps.  A conviction of this determines them to make no terms of commerce with us.  They say, they will pocket