Yours of the 7th instant has been duly received, with the pamphlet enclosed, for which I return you my thanks.  Nothing can be more exactly and seriously true than what is there stated; that but a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State; that the purest system of morals ever before preached to man, has been adulterated and sophisticated by artificial constructions, into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves; that rational men not being able to swallow their impious heresies, in order to force them down their throats, they raise the hue and cry of infidelity, while themselves are the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do in fact constitute the real Anti-Christ.

You expect that your book will have some effect on the prejudices which the society of Friends entertain against the present and late administrations.  In this I think you will be disappointed.  The Friends are men, formed with the same passions, and swayed by the same natural principles and prejudices as others.  In cases where the passions are neutral, men will display their respect for the religious professions of their sect.  But where their passions are enlisted, these professions are no obstacle.  You observe very truly, that both the late and present administration conducted the government on principles professed by the Friends.  Our efforts to preserve peace, our measures as to the Indians, as to slavery, as to religious freedom, were all in consonance with their professions.  Yet I never expected we should get a vote from them, and in this I was neither deceived nor disappointed.  There is no riddle in this, to those who do not suffer themselves to be duped by the professions of religious sectaries.  The theory of American Quakerism is a very obvious one.  The mother society is in England.  Its members are English by birth and residence, devoted to their own country, as good citizens ought to be.  The Quakers of these States are colonies or filiations from the mother society, to whom that society sends its yearly lessons.  On these the filiated societies model their opinions, their conduct, their passions, and attachments.  A Quaker is, essentially an Englishman, in whatever part of the earth he is born or lives.  The outrages of Great Britain on our navigation and commerce have kept us in perpetual bickerings with her.  The Quakers here have taken side against their own government; not on their profession of peace, for they saw that peace was our object also; but from devotion to the views of the mother society.  In 1797 and 8, when an administration sought war with France, the Quakers were the most clamorous for war.  Their principle of peace, as a secondary one, yielded