Part 38

The subjects of all Mr. Rittenhouse’s philosophical papers, comprised in the first volume of the Society’s Transactions, having been now noticed, some public acts connected with two of the objects to which those papers relate, and which took place about the time to which these memoirs are brought down shall, at present, be adverted to.

The Orrery had attracted a very general attention, among learned, ingenious, and well-informed persons, in this country: it could not, therefore, escape the notice of the then Legislature of Pennsylvania. Accordingly, the honourable testimony borne by that very respectable body, to the merits of Mr. Rittenhouse, is thus expressed in the Journal of the House, under the date of March the 8th, 1771.

“The members of assembly, having viewed the Orrery constructed by Mr. David Rittenhouse, a native of this Province, and being of opinion that it greatly exceeds all others hitherto constructed, in demonstrating the true Situations of the celestial Bodies, their Magnitudes, Motions, Distances, Periods, Eclipses, and Order, upon the principles of the Newtonian System:

“Resolved, That the sum of three hundred pounds be given to Mr. Rittenhouse, as a Testimony of the high sense which this House entertain of his Mathematical genius and Mechanical abilities, in constructing the said Orrery. And a Certificate for the said sum, being drawn at the table, was signed by the Speaker and delivered to Mr. Evans.

“Ordered, That Mr. Evans, Mr. Rhoads, Mr. James, Mr. Rodman, Mr. Morton, Mr. Carpenter, Mr. Montgomery, and Mr. Edwards, with the Speaker, be a Committee to agree with and purchase from Mr. Rittenhouse a new Orrery, for the use of the Public, at any sum not exceeding four hundred pounds, lawful money of this Province.”

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Footnote 161:

Joseph Galloway, Esq. was then speaker.

Footnote 162:

The committee, named in the above order of the general assembly, made the following report to that body, on the 24th of September, 1771; viz.

“The committee appointed to agree with, and purchase from Mr. Rittenhouse a new Orrery for the use of the public, beg leave to report, that they have, in pursuance of the order of assembly, agreed with Mr. Rittenhouse for a new Orrery, at the price of four hundred pounds, the price limited by the house; to consist of one principal square (face,) of eight feet or more each way, with two wings; making in the whole one large front, as nearly resembling the form of the Orrery now standing in the College of the city of Philadelphia, as its superior size will admit.” (Signed by all the members of the committee.)

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Unfortunately, the important object designed to have been obtained “for the use of the Public,” by the Order which closes this legislative resolution was not executed. This disappointment of the liberal intentions of the Legislature arose, probably, from the many and arduous employments in which Mr. Rittenhouse was almost constantly engaged, in the short period which intervened between that time and the commencement of the troubles in America. But, whatever may have been the cause, the consequence is much to be regretted.

In January, 1771, Mr. Rittenhouse was elected one of the Secretaries of the American Philosophical Society; and on the 22d of February following, an Address was presented to the General Assembly by that Society, requesting the acceptance, by each Member of the House, of the first volume of the Society’s Transactions, then recently published. This Address, which was signed by order and in behalf of the Society, by Dr. Smith, Dr. Ewing, and Mr. Robert Strettel Jones, together with Mr. Rittenhouse, as the Secretaries, was favourably received by the Assembly.

Some short time prior to this, viz. on the 22d of September, 1770, Dr. Thomas Bond and Samuel Rhoads, Esq. two of the Vice-Presidents of the American Philosophical Society, had, by their Order and in their behalf, transmitted to the General Assembly the Observations on the Transits of Venus and Mercury, then unpublished; not only those which had been made under the directions of that Society, but such as had, in the intermediate time, been received from the other American Colonies and from England: the Society expressing, at the same time, a due sense of the obligations they were under to the Assembly, “for the countenance and encouragement they had given them, in carrying on the designs of the Institution; and, that they were particularly thankful for the generous assistance granted to them, for making those Observations.” They say further: “We have the pleasure to find they have been highly acceptable to those learned Bodies in Europe, to whom they have been communicated;” and, that they were “likely to be of great service, in settling that important point in Astronomy, which was proposed from the Transit of Venus.”

It is evident from these proceedings, that there was, at that day, a reciprocation of good will between the Legislature of Pennsylvania, and a most valuable Scientific Institution, established within the bounds of their jurisdiction. While the legislative body, on the one hand, encouraged such institutions, and extended a liberal patronage to persons of genius and useful talents; men of learning and abilities, on the other, were stimulated by a sense of gratitude, and a laudable desire of honourable fame, to exert themselves for the public welfare.

Among the Members of the then General Assembly of Pennsylvania, were John Dickinson, William Allen, George Ross, Edward Biddle, Charles Humphreys, John Sellers, John and Israel Jacobs, and James Wright, besides the very respectable characters named in the foregoing resolution and order of the House.

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Footnote 163:

Messrs. Dickinson, Humphreys, Morton, Ross and Biddle, together with Mifflin and Franklin, were delegated on the part of Pennsylvania to the first general congress, which met in Philadelphia on the 5th of September, 1774; and the same gentlemen, with the addition of Messrs. Willing and Wilson, were also delegates from Pennsylvania in the second general congress, which met in the same city on the 10th of May, 1775. Of these “dignified and ever memorable assemblies,” composed of that “illustrious band of patriots whose worth sheds a lustre on the American character,” the great Washington was also a member.

Mr. Dickinson, the writer of the celebrated Farmer’s Letters, was a distinguished lawyer, statesman and scholar. Dr. Ramsay (who published his History of the American Revolution at the close of the year 1789,) remarks, that “the stamp-act, which was to have taken place in 1765, employed the pens and tongues of many of the colonists,” and, that “the duties imposed in 1767, called forth the pen of John Dickinson, who in a series of letters, signed ‘A Pennsylvania Farmer,’ may be said to have sown the seeds of the revolution.”

From the commencement of the momentous controversy between the North-American colonies and the parent state, Mr. Dickinson was an able and strenuous assertor of the rights of the colonists. In the summer of the year 1768, the Rev. Mr. Barton sent him a little artificial fountain or jet-d’eau, called a perpetual fountain, prettily contrived and ornamented. On that occasion, the patriotic feelings of Mr. Dickinson were thus expressed, in an handsome allusion to this engine; feelings, called forth by some sentiments contained in the letter which accompanied this small present,—“I wish” (said he, in his answer to Mr. Barton’s letter, dated the 29th of August,)—“I wish ‘a perpetual fountain’ may water the tree of American liberty—I shall always be ready and willing, with pious hands, to sprinkle its roots; even though, for every drop of the pure element I throw upon them, the free-booters should pour upon me all the foul waters in which they delight to dabble. I have acted from the best of motives, the love of freedom and of my country. If reproaches can influence the weak and malicious, they never can blot from my memory the pleasing consciousness of having endeavoured to do my duty. I am extremely sensible of my own frailties; and yet I think I have so much charity, that I reflect with pleasure, that perhaps these very people who abuse me, may derive some little advantage from those very actions of mine for which they abuse me. May heaven grant this to be the case! It is all the revenge I desire to take of them; and this I think, my good sir, is a Christian revenge.”

Messrs. Allen, Ross, and Biddle, shall be noticed in another place.

Mr. Sellers was a sensible and ingenious country-gentleman, possessed of some skill in mathematical and astronomical science. Messrs. John and Israel Jacobs (whose sister was the second wife of Mr. Rittenhouse) were also well-informed country-gentlemen: the former was speaker of the general assembly of Pennsylvania, and the latter a member of congress, after the revolution. Mr. James Wright was a very respectable representative of the county of Lancaster, before the revolution. The gentlemen named in the committee of the general assembly, to treat with Mr. Rittenhouse for the purchase of an Orrery for the use of the public, were likewise conspicuous for their worth. Of these, Mr. Rhoads was one of the vice-presidents of the American Philosophical Society, and Mr. Morton, a judge of the supreme court of Pennsylvania, before the revolution: both were afterwards members of congress.

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The various agitations which the public mind underwent in this country, in the succeeding four years, in consequence of its disputes with the parent state, and until the commencement of hostilities between the two countries, seem to place Mr. Rittenhouse more out of view for some time, with respect to any public employments. Then, all classes of people appeared to have become Politicians. The interests of Literature were neglected; Science, abstracted from Politics, was little cultivated; and all other considerations were, in general, apparently absorbed in the views which the American people entertained of their public affairs, and in the prosecution of measures, adapted either for the obtaining a redress of the then existing grievances, or to meet the possible contingency of an adverse event. There was, in fact, for about four years preceding the year 1775, a great interruption, sometimes an almost total suspension, in the American colonies of Great Britain, of all pursuits, except the ordinary and indispensable ones of Industry and Commerce. Yet about the commencement of this period, (viz. in the summer of 1771,) Mr. Rittenhouse was engaged with Mr. Kinnersley and some other gentlemen, several days successively, in making a series of experiments at Philadelphia, on the Gymnotus Electricus, or Electric Eel; for the purpose of ascertaining the nature of the faculty by which this fish is enabled, on being touched, to impart a shock, very similar in sensation to that produced by the electric fluid. An account of these experiments was long afterwards communicated by Mr. Rittenhouse to Professor Barton of Philadelphia, and will be found in the first volume of his Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal.

It was during this interval that Mr. Rittenhouse experienced a long course of exemption from any very conspicuous public employments, which could interfere with his favourite studies; an interval, in which he was disposed to have enjoyed a kind of dignified leisure, amidst the tranquillity of domestic employments; so far as the existing state of things in the political world would permit a man, solicitous for his country’s happiness, to participate in any sort of gratification, that might be deemed incompatible with a due degree of interest in the public weal. He possessed too enlightened and patriotic a mind not to be keenly sensible of the delicate, as well as alarming situation, in which his country was then placed. But nature had fitted him for the quiet station of domestic life, and the delightful pursuits of natural science; rather than for the bustle of official situation, and for those speculative projects in politics, wherein specious theories often terminate in the most deceptive results.

He had been investigating principles founded in Truth, from his childhood; this object was always near to his heart; and he set little value on any thing that did not lead to its attainment. This predominating disposition of his mind is indeed plainly evinced by a single sentence, contained in a letter which he addressed to Mr. Barton, so early as the 16th of February, 1764. Having had a personal interview with an eminent and worthy clerical gentleman, well disposed to befriend him, but who was more a metaphysical than a natural philosopher, he thus expressed himself on the occasion: “I had a good deal of conversation with Mr. ******, not, perhaps, greatly to the satisfaction of either of us; for he appears to me to be a Mystical Philosopher, and you know I care not a farthing for any thing but sober Certainty in Philosophy.”