Part 69

This was in the year 1789.

Footnote 276b:

Afterwards promoted to the rank of Major-General.

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The Mint has been continued in Philadelphia, ever since its establishment,—a great commercial city being very properly considered the most suitable situation for such an institution; its operations have been conducted, for many years past, with activity; and there are few coins superior in beauty, to those of the American Mint.

In less than a year after Dr. Rittenhouse had engaged himself in the duties appertaining to the Directorship of the Mint, he was again called upon to assist his countrymen, by the aid of his talents, in effecting an important water-communication, inland, which was then contemplated. An association, called “The Conewago-Canal Company,” was formed in Philadelphia, in pursuance of a law enacted the 13th of April, 1791; by which the sum of fourteen thousand dollars was appropriated, for the purpose of improving the navigation of the river Susquehanna, between Wright’s Ferry (now the thriving town of Columbia) and the mouth of the Swatara. This company consisted of seventeen members, of whom Dr. Rittenhouse was one: and they were incorporated by an act of assembly, passed the 10th of April, 1793.

Just about this period, an occurrence took place at Philadelphia, then the seat of the national government, which excited much public feeling at the time, and—contrary to the expectations of some good men of sanguine dispositions—became the source of many political evils, afterwards. This was the formation of what was called the Democratic Society; a political association, produced by the effervescences of the French revolution, while that all-important event was yet viewed in a favourable light by free nations: and of this society, Dr. Rittenhouse was elected President.

That Dr. Rittenhouse should have been selected as the President of the Democratic Society, and chosen for that station, can be readily accounted for. This gentleman had evinced, from the commencement of the troubles between the American colonies of Great-Britain and the parent country, an ardent attachment to the cause of his native land. The benevolence of his disposition rendered him the well-wisher of all mankind: hence every thing that, in his view, bore the semblance of oppression, was odious to him. But the wrongs which the country of his nativity, more particularly, experienced, from the unconstitutional claims of the British Parliament, roused those feelings of patriotism, with which his virtuous breast was animated, at the beginning of the American discontents: he was, therefore, an early and decided Whig; and the same principles that induced him to become such, continued to actuate him throughout the contest between the two countries.

The benignity of his temper must, nevertheless, have induced him to be truly rejoiced at the return of peace. When that happy event took place, he had too much goodness of heart to remember past injuries, too much understanding to be influenced by unworthy and mischievous prejudices; he had not a particle of malignity in his nature. At the period of the Declaration of American Independence by Congress, he believed, with a great majority of his countrymen, that necessity justified the separation: and from that epocha, he was heartily disposed to hold the mother-country, as his compatriots then declared they did the rest of mankind,—“enemies in war, in peace friends.”

When the French revolution commenced, the benevolence of his feelings led him to believe, as almost every American then did, that it would meliorate the condition of a great nation, whose inhabitants constituted a large portion of the population of the European world;—a nation, which, by the rigourous policy of its government, under a long succession of ambitious and arbitrary monarchs, anterior to the one then on the tottering throne of that ill-fated country, had become extremely corrupt among the higher orders of the people; and in which, the inferior classes were subjected to great oppression. The American people having, on their separation from the mother-country, instituted for themselves, as an independent nation, a constitution wholly republican; they were disposed to attribute the vices of the French government, before the revolution, to the circumstance of its being a monarchy, and the sufferings of the people of France, as necessarily resulting from the monarchial system of rule over them. When, therefore, a republican form of government was erected in France on the ruins of the throne; the excesses, and even the atrocities of the people, which attended the demolition of the ancient government of that country, and the establishment of political institutions entirely new to its inhabitants, found palliatives in the dispositions of most good men among us: they were ascribed to the strong conflicting passions naturally produced between the great body of the people, on the one part, and their rulers on the other; excited by the long sufferings of the former, and an unwillingness to part with power, in the latter. Great enormities were considered as the inevitable consequences of these opposite interests, when brought into action amidst a population of many millions of men, whose national characteristic is that of levity of temper and vehement passions; and a conflict, wherein all the malign dispositions of the most depraved characters, actuated by motives the most flagitious, intermingled themselves with the designs of those who meant well. Such men, freed from all the restraints of government and law, and utterly disregarding all the obligations of either religious or moral duties, had then an opportunity of giving a full vent to their views, whether of ambition, avarice or personal resentments; and they did not fail to embrace it. While, on the one hand, demagogues fanned the popular flame by the vilest artifices; put on the semblance of patriotism, and by practising the most detestable hypocrisy, professed themselves to be the friends of the people, whom they were deluding into premeditated ruin. Even virtuous Frenchmen, and many of them possessing no inconsiderable share of discernment, soon fell victims to the machiavelian policy of these pretended patriots. These, in their turn, were sacrificed under the denunciations of their compeers, or other aspiring villains; and thus, others still in succession: until, finally, a fortunate military usurper, restored the monarchy in his own person, with absolute sway; and by substituting an horrible military despotism, in the place of a most sanguinary anarchy, confounded all ranks of his subjects in one vast mass of miserable slaves; who have been since employed in destroying the peace, freedom and happiness of their fellow-men, in other countries. Such have been, hitherto, the fruits of the French revolution; from which, at its commencement, myriads of good men fondly anticipated an issue precisely the reverse.

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Footnote 277:

The deleterious, though—as it might almost be called—fascinating influence, of the revolution undertaken by the people of France, extended itself far and wide, prior to the murder of their king, even in countries under the milder forms of government: many characters of great worth were every where misled by the plausibility of the avowed designs of its authors and supporters; and in no country was the infatuation more general, than in the United States. In England itself, it begat a kind of political frenzy; and, had not the wise and salutary writings of the celebrated Burke arrested its progress, in good time, the most fatal consequences must have ensued. Among the literary and scientific men in Britain, who became deeply infected by the revolution-mania of that day, was Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Miss Anna Seward (one of his biographers) remarks, that the Doctor has introduced into his Botanic Garden an allegory, representing Liberty “as a great form, slumbering within the iron cage and marble walls of the French Bastile, unconscious of his chains; till, touched by the patriot flame, he rends his flimsy bonds, lifts his colossal form, and rears his hundred arms over his foes; calls to the good and brave of every country, with a voice that echoes like the thunder of heaven to the polar extremities;

“Gives to the winds his banner broad, unfurl’d, “And gathers in its shade the living world!”

In consequence of Darwin’s use of this grossly misapplied figure;—as the issue of the French revolution too fatally proves it to have been,—Miss Seward offers the following apology for the subject of her friendly pen:

“This sublime sally of a too-confiding imagination, has made the poet and his work countless foes. They triumphed over him,” says his fair biographer, “on a result so contrary,—on the mortal wounds given by French crimes to real Liberty. They forget, or choose to forget, that this part of the poem (though published after the other) appeared in 1791, antecedent to the dire regicide, and to all those unprecedented scenes of sanguinary cruelty inflicted on France, by three of her republican tyrants; compared to whom, the most remorseless of her monarchs was mild and merciful.”

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Notwithstanding the criminal excesses committed by many of the French revolutionists, before the institution of their short lived and turbulent republic, it was hoped by most true Americans, attached by fidelity as well as principle to that system of government, which was then the legitimate one in their own country, that its ultimate establishment in France would produce permanent benefits, to that country at least, which would infinitely overbalance what were considered, by zealous republicans, as temporary and partial evils, such as seemed to be unavoidable, in bringing about a radical change in the fundamental institutions of a great and powerful empire. Many Americans were not, indeed, so sanguine in their expectations: but such were, nevertheless, the prevailing sentiments of the citizens of the United States,—even among the best-informed men.

The deliberative and cautionary proceedings (as they purported to be) of the more prominent revolutionary characters in France, in their minor popular assemblies, prior to the establishment of their national constitutional form of government, were judged of, in the United States, with respect to their objects and utility, as similar assemblies, under the denominations of councils of safety, committees of safety, &c. were considered by their own citizens, at the commencement of the American revolution: they were deemed to be necessary agents of the people in each country, respectively, during the interregnum which succeeded the abandonment of their ancient governments.

The Jacobin Club of Paris was one of these political engines of the French revolution, for some time after its commencement; and, perhaps, that assembly contained many worthy members, originally, although it afterwards became notoriously infamous, by the monstrous enormity of the crimes it countenanced and produced.

Chief Justice Marshall has observed (in his Life of Washington,) that “soon after the arrival of Mr. Genet, a Democratic Society was formed in Philadelphia, which seems to have taken for its model the Jacobin Club of Paris:”—“Its organization,” continues the historian, “appears to have been completed on the 30th of May, 1793.”

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Footnote 278:

Mr. Genet arrived in Philadelphia the 16th of May, 1793; and in the evening of the same day a meeting of the citizens was held at the state-house, when a committee was appointed to draw up an address to this minister from the republic of France: Mr. Rittenhouse was the first named on that committee. At a meeting of the citizens held the next day, he, as chairman of that committee, reported an address accordingly; which, being adopted by the persons then assembled, was presented to the new minister, the ensuing morning.

The president’s proclamation of neutrality had then been issued between three and four weeks: the addressers therefore say, keeping this in their view; “Earnestly giving to the national exertions (of France) our wishes and our prayers, we cannot resist the pleasing hope, that although America is not a party in the existing war, she may still be able, in a state of peace, to demonstrate the sincerity of her friendship, by affording very useful assistance to her sister republic.”—The “useful assistance,” here alluded to, and which it was supposed France might derive from this country, “in a state of peace,” did not contemplate any infringement of the neutrality of the United States: Nor could Mr. Genet, himself, consider the language of the address in any other than its true sense; for, in his extempore answer, (a written one was also returned,) he says, “From the remote situation of America, and other circumstances, France does not expect that America should become a party in the war; but remembering that she has already combated for your liberties, (and if it was necessary, and she had the power, would cheerfully again enlist in your cause,) we hope, (and every thing I hear and see assures me our hope will be realized,) that her citizens will be treated as brothers, in danger and distress.” This declaration of the French minister, made immediately after his arrival at the seat of the American government, forbad the addressers to believe, that either he or any other agent of the French government would afterwards undertake to violate the neutrality of the United States.

Footnote 278a:

It is dated the 22d of April, 1793.

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