Transcript
I hope by the time I have done with it, to make it the
repository for information on the manufacturing subjects
treated in it. I have this at heart; but I fear the
sale will not continue to support the work, till I have
exhausted my collections and my plan.
Mr. Ogilvie, who I find was for some time your
neighbor, spent a week here. I was greatly pleased
with his talent and his manners; but the political com-
plexion of this place did not suit him, nor he the people.
There is, both here and in Baltimore, a general, unspecify-
ic kind of rumour operating against him, about the bad
tendency of his principles; what is meant, I could never
ascertain; but I suspect he must have been, in the warmth of youthful research, too ungaurded in his religious expression. Northward of Virginia at least, this is a crime of deep dye: and though the writ be obsolete, the spirit of burning heretics, religious or political, is not. It is here as elsewhere, the strongest among those who know the least, and feel the least, and care the least about religion af any sect or kind. Prudential motives have kept locked up a manuscript of mine, for these fourteen years, and will induce me one day or other to commit it to the fire. I really have not yet made up my mind, whether it be not in the order, and conformable to the will of Providence, that for some centuries, at least to come, men should be deceived by frauds and lies: and whether these be not necessary to keep them in good order, and whether a sudden