equal estates, equality of rights, and the severity of the climate, renders the people active, industrious and sober. Attention to religion and good morals is a distinguishing trait in our character. It is plain, therefore, that we require for our regulation laws which will not suit the circumstances of our southern brethren, and that laws made for them would not apply to us. Unhappiness would be the uniform product of such laws; for no state can be happy when the laws contradict the general habits of the people, nor can any state retain its freedom while there is a power to make and enforce such laws. We may go further, and say, that it is impossible for any single legislature so fully to comprehend the circumstances of the different parts of a very extensive dominion as to make laws adapted to those circumstances. Hence arises in most nations of extensive territory, the necessity of armies, to cure the defect of the laws. It is actually under the pressure of such an absurd government, that the Spanish provinces have groaned for near three centuries; and such will be our misfortune and degradation, if we ever submit to have all the business of the empire done by one legislature. The contrary principle of local legislation by the representatives of the people, who alone are to be governed by the laws, has raised us to our present greatness; and an attempt on the part of Great Britain to invade this right, brought on the revolution, which gave us a separate rank among the nations. We even declared, that we would not be represented in the national legislature, because one assembly was not adequate to the purposes of internal legislation and taxation. AGRIPPA. [_Remainder next Tuesday._] Agrippa, XIII. The Massachusetts Gazette, (Number 400) TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 1788. (_Concluded from our last._) TO THE MASSACHUSETTS CONVENTION. _Gentlemen_,