'The inconsistency that strikes me the most is that between the name of your city, Philadelphia, and the spirit of rancor, malice, and hatred that breathes in the newspapers. For I learn from those papers that State is divided into parties, that each party ascribes all the public operations of the other to vicious motives, that they do not even suspect one another of the smallest degree of honesty, that the anti-Federalists are such merely from the fear of losing power, places, or emoluments, which they have in possession or expectation; that the Federalists are a set of conspirators, who aim at establishing a tyranny over the persons and property of their countrymen and who live in splendor on the plunder of the people. I learn, too, that your justices of the peace, though chosen by their neighbors, make a villanous trade of their offices, and promote discord to augment fees, and fleece their electors; and that this would not be mended were the choice in the Executive Council, who, with interested or party aims, are continually making as improper appointments, witness a 'petty fiddler, sycophant, and scoundrel' appointed judge of the admiralty, an 'old woman and fomentor of sedition' to be another of the judges, and 'a Jeffreys' chief justice, etc., etc., with 'harpies,' the comptroller and naval officers, to prey upon the merchants, and deprive them of their property by force of arms, etc. I am informed, also, by these papers, that your General Assembly, though the annual choice of the people, shows no regard to their rights, but from sinister views or ignorance makes laws in direct violation of the Constitution, to divest the inhabitants of their property, and give it to strangers and intruders, and that the Council, either fearing the resentment of their constituents or plotting to enslave them, had projected to disarm them, and given orders for that purpose; and, finally, that your President, the unanimous joint choice of the Council and Assembly, is 'an old rogue, who gave his assent to the Federal Constitution merely to avoid refunding money he had purloined from the United States.' There is, indeed, a good deal of man's inconsistency in all this, and yet a stranger, seeing it in our own prints, though he does not believe it all, may probably believe enough of it to conclude that Pennsylvania is peopled by a set of the most unprincipled, wicked, rascally, and quarrelsome scoundrels upon the face of the globe. I have sometimes, indeed, suspected that those papers are the manufacture of foreigners among you, who write with the view of disgracing your country, and making you appear contemptible and detestable all the world over; but then I wonder at the indiscretion of your printers in publishing such writings.