380 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



one that had gone to pieces, and made its first appear- 

 ance at Baltimore. During this summer it had sought 

 to take advantage of the presence of the British army 

 at New York, but with trifling success. It then came 

 here, where another evil star awaited it. An old law 

 of the state of Pensylvania forbids public plays. 

 When that law was passed Quaker principles had a 

 stronger hold than now; for enlightenment is gain- 

 ing ground here also, and the long sojourn of 

 many foreigners, military men and others, has 

 greatly changed manners, taste, and ideas, widen- 

 ing and increasing a disposition for all pleasures. A 

 great part of the modernized inhabitants desired that 

 plays should go on, which the others vehemently op- 

 posed as an unlawful and immoral innovation ; so the 

 general question was : will the play be countenanced 

 by the government or not ? The Assembly had recently 

 met, most of its members those who have been born 

 and brought up in the country, have never seen a play, 

 and therefore have few and wrong ideas as to the 

 morality of the matter, or on the other hand Quakers 

 and other sectarians who from their religious prin- 

 ciples frown on all the pleasures of the rest of the world 

 -to this assembly, then, representations and petitions 

 were submitted pro and contra, and judgment was 

 awaited. 



A petition signed by very many of the inhabitants 

 declares the dreaded licensing of the play to be a con- 

 temptuous abuse of the law ; extremely sinful after a 

 war just ended;* saying: that an authoritative appro- 

 bation of this idle, licentious, pernicious pleasure would 



* At Baltimore even during the war the play was legitimate. 



