Be
pleased to be informed that you are bound to conduct yourselves as the
Society with which you are joined, are pleased to have you conduct, or
if you please, you may leave it. It is true the will and pleasure of
the society is generally declared in its laws: But there may be
exceptions, and the present case is without doubt one.--Suppose there
was no law of society to restrain you from murdering your own father,
what think you? If either of you should please to take it into your
head to perpetrate such a villainous act, so abhorrent to the will of
the society, would you not be restrained? And is the Liberty of your
Country of less importance than the life of your father! But what is
most astonishing is, that some two or three persons of very little
consequence in themselves, have Dared openly to give out that They
Will vend the goods they have imported, tho' they have Solemnly
pledg'd Their Faith to the body of merchants, that they should remain
in store 'till a general importation should take place! Where then is
the honor! where is the shame of these persons, who can look into the
faces of those very men with whom they have contracted, & tell them
Without Blushing that they are resolved to Violate the contract! Is it
avarice? Is it obstinacy, perverseness, pride, or from what root of
bitterness does such an unaccountable defection from the laws of
honor, honesty, and even humanity spring? Is it the Authority Of An
Unnatural Parent--the advice of some false friend, or their own want
of common understanding, and the first principles of virtue, by which
these unhappy young persons have been induced, or left to resolve upon
perpetrating that, at the very tho't of which they should have
shudder'd! By this resolution they have already disgrac'd themselves;
if they have the Hardiness to put the resolution into practice, who
will ever hereafter confide in them? Can they promise themselves the
regards of the respectable body of merchants whom they have affronted?
or can they even wish for the esteem of their country which they have
basely deserted, or worse, which they have attempted to wound in the
very heart.
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