members present shall be sufficient? If the latter, two men may pass bills. I am very sorry for the accident which happened to the French ship, but hope it will not be long before it will be repaired. Rivington says the America was damaged in launching. Oswald's trial has not come on yet. It will be difficult to say how far the liberty of the press may be carried without degenerating into licentiousness. Some line ought to be drawn.

Remember me to Mrs. B. We have nothing new or entertaining but what you will see in the enclosed papers. Adieu. E. H.

I believe you will find the sequel to Major Washington's Journal in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1754.*

BELKNAP TO HAZARD.

Dover, Dec. 2, 1782.

My Deab Sir, — You are certainly the last of all my friends that I should think of charging with neglect. I beg, therefore, you would not do yourself so much injustice as to imagine that I entertain such a suspicion. Your present business, I know, requires constant attention; and, if I had no other proof of it, your not having been able yet to read the two pamphlets I sent you is sufficient.

I have a new mark of your attention to me in the magazines you have been so kind as to send, three parcells of which I have received, and am so pleased with them that I cannot but greatly regret that any one number should be missing. Please to accept my thanks. I wish Mr. Aitken could find encouragement to revive and continue so valuable a work; or, if matter should not flow in monthly, that he would undertake something on the plan of the Annual Register. Surely this whole continent might furnish material for one thin octavo in a year. If antiquities were to make an article, you could unlock your curiosa; and, if any thing that I could clo would help, it should not be lacking. I wish it were in my power to send you any thing from this quarter, but you know what a barren region this is. A weekly paper filled with thrice-told tales, a budget of Acts of Assembly after every session, and once a year a new Constitution, are the principal productions of our press.

Mr. Payne, you say, has English ideas of literary property. Why could not application be made to Congress to recommend to the States the enacting of laws to secure copyrights to authors or their assigns for a limited time? Such a recommendation from so respectable a body might chance to be attended to in preference to applications from individuals.

Your argument about Norway, &c, does not strike me as conclusive against my conjecture. I will, however, take some opportunity to give the whole matter a thorough review, with the assistance of your hints; and, if I think it worth sending forth on a forlorn hope, will venture it; if not, it shall rest as it is.

Among the papers you last sent me, I observe two recommendations of two distinct bodies of Presbyterians for fasts. Pray what is the reason of their acting separately? I always thought there was but one collective body of them at the southward, though subdivided into presbyteries, &c. I lately observed the name of James Latta signed as moderator of a presbytery or synod. Where does he now reside? I was formerly acquainted with him, and he has been at my house, but I have heard nothing of him for many years.

There is one passage in one of these papers that I think very extraordinary: the "principle of holding communion with all that are deemed good people" is branded with the epithet "latitudinarian," and not only enumerated among the sins of the times, but loaded with the reproach of tending "to subvert the whole system of Divine truth, and efface the very form of the visible Church." This, T say, appears to me very extraordinary; and the reason is that I have, for many years, thought it my duty to hold communion with all that I can charitably hope to be "good people," let them belong to whatever denomination of Christians; and this I have done in obedience to that golden maxim of the Apostle, "Receive ye one another, even as Christ hath received us to the glory of God." I wish the Associate Presbytery may be enabled to see that the extirpation of a spirit of bigotry from among Christians, and the cultivation of extensive charity and universal benevolence, would tend to "hasten the more eminent glory of the latter day," when "Ephraim shall not envy Judah, nor Judah vex Ephraim," but "the stick of Joseph" and " the stick of Judah" "shall be one in the hand of the Lord."

I have lately been considering the plan you proposed to me for publishing my volume. That part of it which relates to sending the copy by sheets to England I have adopted, and have written to Longman on the matter. I preferred him to the gentleman you recommended, because of his being intimately acquainted with two persops, one in London and another in Boston, who are friendly to the work in which I am engaged. The channel of conveyance is, however, so circuitous and difficult that I cannot expect an answer for some time. As to publishing here, I am at a loss, unless I could meet with a printer who was able to advance something, and generous enough to share the risque with me. In that case, I should think it reasonable that he should share the profits. I have not been able yet to find one to my mind in this quarter. To advance so great a sum as £3 or 400 is out of my power. I wish I had you here to talk over the matter. I know of no person more capable of advising me. Mrs. B. begs to be remembered to you; she is much better than in the summer. The Metropolitan's lady advances fast towards blessing him with a boy!

If my letters are not so regular as they ought to be, you must impute it to my distance from the office, and the difficulty of communication at this season of the year, when the rivers are impassable. I am, my dear sir, with much respect and affection, your obliged friend and servant,

Jeremy Belknap.

HAZARD TO BELKNAP.

Philadelphia, Dec. 11, 1782.

My Dear Sir, — Since my last, I have met with Garcilasso de la Vega's Royal Commentaries of Peru, translated by Sir Paul Ricault, and have purchased them, but so lately that I have not had time to read more than a few pages. As far as I have gone, he countenances your supposition respecting the peopling of America; but I shall be able hereafter to give you full information. Interim, adieu. E. H.

HAZARD TO BELKNAP. .

Philadelphia, Dec. 18, 1782.

Since my last to you, my dear sir, I have continued my researches into Garcilasso de la Vega, and think I have got such information as will be satisfactory. He says: —

"The Spaniards have been masters of Peru seventy-one^ years," p. 11. "When I was sixteen or seventeen years of age, I asked the most elderly person among them/* &c, p. 11. This man (who was an Inca) told him "how many years it may be since our Father, the Sun, sent his offspring among us, I am not able precisely to declare, because my memory may fail me in it, but I imagine they may be about four hundred years/5 p. 14. "I was born eight years after the Spaniards became masters of the country/' p. 15. "Now, at this time, being the year 1602, 't is reported," &c, p. 49.

From the above premises, I think we may fairly draw the conclusion we are in quest of, thus: —

The time when he wrote was in the year 1602, when the Spaniards had been masters of Peru seventy-one years: then Peru was conquered by the Spaniards in 1531. He was born eight years after, i.e. in 1539. He must then have been sixteen or seventeen (say seventeen) in 1556, which was the time when he asks the elderly person questions. Deduct four hundred years from 1556, then 1156 will be the time of the commencement of Manco Capac's reign. So that you see you made a very accurate guess when you supposed him to have been a contemporary with Henry II.

Knowing your avidity for newspapers, I shall send you some more, as usual; but the papers of this place have become the most indecent publications of the kind I ever met with. They are now the receptacles of obscenity and filth, the vehicles of scandal, and the instruments of the most infamous abuse. Would you suppose the liberty of the press to have been attacked, or in the least danger, when every labour produces such monstrous births? and yet you see what outcries there are about it! In short, if any character, public or private, however respectable, may not with impunity be attacked with the most indecent virulence, then the liberty of the press is in danger, as that of the Church used to be when any but the ruling party made advances towards power. Our printers, with their present license, appear to me the most dangerous set of men amongst us; and, if they are suffered to go on as they have done, friendship and every tender senti