However opposite to his other studies these may at first appear, they derive their perfection from the same extensive and accurate observations of the beauties of nature. He was intimately acquainted with the Dutch, the German, and the French languages; the two latter of which he acquired without the aid of a master. They opened to him the discoveries of foreign nations, and enabled him the better to pursue his favourite studies.

In speaking of Mr. Rittenhouse, it has been customary to regret his want of what is called a liberal education-but that we have lost any thing from this may well be doubted. Nature was his teacher, and his powerful mind was stored with knowledge which he had imbibed at her great fountain. Had the usual forms of education been imposed upon such a mind, instead of soaring to the heavens, and roaming at large amidst moving worlds, with his fondness for music and poetry, he might have spent his hours of study in the less sublime pursuit of the modulations of sound, or measuring the feet of Greek and Latin poetry.

Inventions and improvements in every art and science were frequently submitted to his examination, and his judgment upon them gave the tone to public approval or rejection. Wherever he went he met with demonstrations of public respect and private attention. But not to his own country alone was his reputation confined; his name was known and his character admired in every land where science dwelt and genius was cultivated. The degree of Master of Arts was conferred upon him by the College of Philadelphia in 1768. The same degree was awarded to him by the College of William and Mary, in Virginia, in 1784. In the year 1789 he received the degree of Doctor of Laws in the College of New Jersey-was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at Boston in 1782, and of the Royal Society of London in 1795. But if he was great in the higher walk of scientific knowledge, he was no less conspicuous in his religious and moral character. He had the most profound respect for sacred things; and we find, in some of his works, the happiest expressions of confidence in the benificence and wisdom of Providence. In one of his orations, he

says:

"Should it please that Almighty power who hath placed us in a world in which we are only permitted to look about us and to die,' to indulge us with existence throughout that part of eternity which remains unspent, and to conduct us through the several stages of his works, here (alluding to the study of astronomy) is ample provision made for employing every faculty of the mind, even allowing its powers to be enlarged through an endless repetition of ages. Let us not, then, complain of the vanity of this world, and that there is nothing in it capable of satisfying us. Happy in those wants-happy in desires for ever in succession to be gratified— happy in a continual approach to the Deity."

"I must confess I am not one of those sanguine spirits who seem to think that when the withered hand of death shall draw up the curtain of eternity, all distance between the creature and the Creator-between the finite and the infinite-will be annihilated. Every enlargement of our faculties-every new happiness conferred upon us-every step we advance towards the Divinity-will very probably render us more and more sensible of his inexhaustible stores of communicable bliss, and of his inaccessible perfection." In another instance, in a letter to a friend, he says::-" Give me leave to mention two or three particular proofs of

infinite goodness in the works of creation. The first is, that of possessing goodness in ourselves; and it is inconsistent with all just reasoning to suppose that there is any thing good, lovely, or praiseworthy in us, which is not possessed in an infinitely higher degree in that Being who called us into existence. In the next place I reckon the exquisite and innocent delight that many things around us are calculated to afford. In this light the beauty and fragrance of a single rose is a better argument for Divine goodness than a luxuriant field of wheat. For, if we could suppose that we were created by a malevolent being, with a design to torment us for his amusement, he must have furnished us with the means of subsistence, and either have made our condition tolerable, or not have left the means of quitting it at pleasure, in our power. Such being my opinion, you will not wonder at my fondness for what Addison calls the pleasures of the imagination. They are all to me so many demonstrations of infinite goodness."

But the religion of Mr. Rittenhouse was not derived wholly from his study and admiration of the material world. He was a firm believer in the Christian revelation; and of this he gave many proofs, in the conformity of his life to the precepts of the Gospel. He once said to a friend, speaking of the truth and excellency of the Christian religion, "that a proof of its Divine origin might be seen in the fact, that the miracles of the Saviour differed from all other miracles, in being entirely of a kind and benevolent nature." As the natural effect of his belief in the relation of the whole human race to each other, in a common father and redeemer, he embraced the whole family of mankind in the arms of his benevolence. The philanthropy of Mr. Rittenhouse did not consist simply in wishes for the happiness of mankind. He reduced this divine principle to practice, by a series of faithful and disinterested services to that part of his fellow creatures to which the usefulness of good men is chiefly confined. His country, his beloved country, was the object of the strongest affections of his heart. For her he thought, for her he laboured, and for her, in the hour of her difficulties and dangers, he mourned. The year of the Declaration of Independence produced no change of his political principles-for he had been educated a republican by his father. He ever avowed, with the sincerest pleasure, his secret attachment to an elective and representative form of government; and twenty years before his death he predicted the immense increase of talents and knowledge that would be produced by our republican institutions on the American character, and that the effects of our revolution would sow the seeds of a new order of things in other parts of the world. He believed political, as well as moral evil, to be intruders into the society of men-that general happiness was the original design and ultimate end of the Divine government; and that the time would come when every part of our globe would echo back the heavenly proclamation of " peace on earth, and good will to man."

In the more limited circles of private life Mr. Rittenhouse commanded esteem and affection. As a neighbour he was kind and charitable. His sympathy was warm to distress of every kind, but it was more alive to the weakness, pain, and poverty of old age. As a friend he was sincere, ardent, and disinterested. As a companion he instructed his associates upon all subjects. His family constituted his chief society, and when the declining state of his health rendered his studies irksome, he passed

whole evenings of his time in reading to, or conversing with, his wife and daughters.

His house, and manner of living, exhibited the taste of a philosopher, the simplicity of a republican, and the temper of a christian. He was independent, and contented with an estate small in the estimate of ambition or avarice, but amply suited to all his wants and desires. He held the office of Treasurer of the State of Pennsylvania by an annual and unanimous vote of the Legislature, from the year 1777 to 1789, and during the whole period declined purchasing the smallest portion of the public debt of the State, thereby manifesting a delicacy of integrity known and felt only by pure and elevated minds."

In the year 1792 he was persuaded to accept the office of Director of the Mint of the United States, but his want of health obliged him to resign it in 1795. Here his conduct was alike highly delicate, for he sometimes paid for work done at the Mint out of his own salary, when he thought the charges would be deemed extravagant by the United States. His economy extended to the employment of his time in a useful manner-no man ever found him idle.

His countenance was remarkable; it displayed such a mixture of contemplation, benignity, and innocence, that it was easy to distinguish him in the largest companies by a previous knowledge of his character. His manners were so universally benign and engaging that he seldom stopped an hour in travelling through the country without being followed by the good wishes of all who attended upon him. There was no affectation of singularity in anything he said or did; he was remarkable for his uncommon modesty, so much so that he appeared to be wholly unconscious of his superiority of intellect. His constitution was naturally feeble, but it was rendered still more so by the sedentary nature of his studies, which often found him consuming the midnight oil.

On the 26th of June, 1796, he breathed his last, and at his request his body was interred in his observatory near his dwelling house, in the presence of a numerous concourse of his fellow citizens.

Thus lived and died this great and extraordinary man, who, like Newton, had soared into the highest regions of science-offering another proof that the humblest origin, and the most adverse circumstances, cannot limit nor control those wonderful gifts of nature, which enable their possessors, as if by a decree of Providence, to dive into the deepest mysteries of his

creation.

But what shall we say of the anomaly that the subject of this memoir should have succeeded Franklin as President of the American Philosophical Society! Franklin, who from a like obscure birth has left behind him a name never to be forgotten while the lightning shall gleam in the heavens! and Rittenhouse, whose splendid genius and civic virtues entitle his memory to the highest honours his country can bestow.

nature.

FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION.

WHOEVER has travelled in the highlands of Scotland, or the mountains of Wales, must have observed the remarkable difference which exists between artificial plantations, and the natural woods of the country. Planted all at once, the former grow up of uniform height, and all their trees present nearly the same form and symmetry. Sown at different periods, with centuries between their growth, the latter exhibit every variety of age and form, from the decaying patriarchs of the forest, which have survived the blasts of some hundred years, to the infant sapling, which is only beginning to shoot under the shelter of a projecting rock or stem. Nor is the difference less remarkable in the room which is severally afforded for growth, in the artificial plantations and in the wilds of The larchers or furs, in the stiff and angular inclosure, are always crowded together; and, if not thinned by the care of the woodman, will inevitably choke each other, or shoot up thin and unhealthy, in consequence of their close proximity to each other, and the dense mass of foliage which overshadows the upper part of the wood. But no such danger need be apprehended in the natural forest. No woodman is called to thin its denizens. No forester's eye is required to tell which should be left, and which cut away, in the vast array. In the ceaseless warfare of the weaker with the stronger, the feeble plants are entirely destroyed. In vain the infant sapling attempts to contend with the old oak, the branches of which overshadow its growth-it is speedily crushed in the struggle. Nor are the means of removing the useless remains less effectual. The hand of nature insensibly clears the waste of its incumbrances; the weakness of time brings them to the ground when their allotted period is expired; and youth, as in the generations of men, springs beside the decay of age, and finds ample room for its expansion over the fallen remains of its paternal stems.

The difference between the artificial plantation and the natural wood, illustrates the distinctions between the imaginary communities which the political economist expects to see grow up, in conformity with his theories, and acting in obedience to his dictates, and the nations of flesh and blood which exist around us, of which we form a part, and which are immediately affected by ill-judged or inapplicable measures of commercial regulation. Nations were planted by the hand of nature; they were not sown, nor their place allotted by human foresight. They exist often close to each other, and under apparently the same physical circumstances, under every possible variety of character, age, and period of growth. The difference even between those ruled by the same government, and inhabited apparently by the same race, is prodigious. Who could suppose that the Dutchman, methodical, calculating, persevering, was next neighbour to the fiery, warlike, and impetuous Frenchman? Or that the southern and western Irish, vehement, impassioned, and volatile, came from the same stock which pervades the whole west of Britain? England, for centuries the abode of industry, effort, and opulence, is subject to the same government, and situated in the same latitude, as Ireland, where

indolence is almost universal, wealth rare, and manufactures in general unknown. Russia, ignorant, united, and ever victorious, adjoins Poland, weak, distracted, and ever vanquished; and Prussia has risen with unheard-of rapidity in national strength and every branch of industry, at the very time when Spain was fast relapsing into slavery and barbarism. Familiar as these truths are to all, they seem to have been, in an unaccountable manner, forgotten by our modern political economists; and the oblivion of them is the principal cause of the remarkable failure which has attended the application to practice of all their theories. They invariably forget the different age of nations; they overlook the essential difference between communities with different national character, or in different stages of manufacturing or commercial advancement, and fall into the fatal error of supposing that one general system is to be readily embraced by, and found applicable to, a cluster of nations existing under every possible variety of physical, social, and political circumstances. Fixing their eyes upon their own country, or rather upon the peculiar interest to which they belong in their own country, they reason as if all mankind were placed in the same circumstances, and would be benefited by the arrangements which they find advantageous. They forget that all nations were not planted at the same time, nor in the same soil; that the difference in their age, the inequality in their growth, the variety in their texture, is as great as in the trees of the forest, the seeds of which have been scattered by the hand of nature; that the incessant warfare of the weaker with the stronger, exists not less in the social than the physical world; and that all systems founded on the oblivion of that continued contest, must ever be traversed by the strongest of all moral laws-the instinct of SELF-PRESERVATION.

We have said that the modern theories, when applied to practice, have, in a remarkable manner, failed. In saying so, we have chiefly in view the acknowledged failure of the strenuous efforts made by England, during the last twenty years, to effect an interchange in the advantages of free trade, and the entire disappointment which has attended the long establishment, on a great scale, of the reciprocity system. To the first we shall advert in the present paper; the second will furnish ample room for reflection in another.

The abstract principles on which the doctrines of free trade are founded, are these: and we put it to the warmest advocates of those principles, whether they are not fairly stated. All nations were not intended by nature, nor are they fitted by their physical circumstances, to excel in the same branches of industry; and it is the variety in the production which they severally can bring to maturity, which at once imposes the necessity for, and occasions the profit of, commercial intercourse. Nothing, therefore, can be so unwise as to attempt, either by arbitrary regulations, to create a branch of industry in a country for which it is not intended by nature, or to retain it in that branch where it is created by forced prohibition. Banish all restrictions, therefore, from commerce; let every nation apply itself to that particular branch of industry for which it is adapted by nature, and receive in exchange the produce of other countries, raised in like manner in conformity with their natural capabilities. Then will the industry of each people be turned into the channel most advantageous and lucrative to itself; each will enjoy the immense advantage of purchasing the commodities it requires at the cheapest possible rate;