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 Copy 1 
 
 ^/ 
 
 RICHARD RUSH, 
 
 O F 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 Reprinted from the Democratic Review, for April, 1840, 
 
 No. XXVIII. — "Political Portraits with 
 
 Pen and Pencil, No. xvm " 
 
 KEW YORK: 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM H. COLYER, 
 NO. 5 HAGUE STREET. 
 
 1840. 
 
J. I, Pease, sc 
 
 z^u^^ 
 
 '^ 
 
 
RICHARD RUSH, 
 
 O F 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 Reprinted from the Democratic Review, for April, 1840, 
 
 No. xxviii. — " Political Portraits with 
 
 Pen and Pencil, No. xviii " 
 
 V 
 
 VI 
 
 ^ 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM H. OOLYER, 
 no. 5 HAGUE STREET. 
 
 1840. 
 
Tfc|l?5 
 
RICHARD RUSH, 
 
 OF PENNSYLVANIA 
 
 • 
 
 Among those who in after times will hold a distinguished place in 
 the list of American Statesmen, when their lives and characters, both 
 public and private, shall be viewed through the impartiality of historic 
 light, most assuredly will be found the subject of the following sketch. 
 If talents of the highest order — an education the most liberal — laborious 
 study — a judgment matured by profound thought — if a long life of de- 
 votion to his country in connexion with some of her most important 
 civic services — if political wisdom drawn from the best and purest 
 sources, and a political integrity never questioned — if the most marked 
 evidence by his fellow-countrymen of their just appreciation of his 
 merits — if such grounds can create an undeniable title to a national 
 name, it will be awarded to Mr. Rush. 
 
 \RicHARD Rush is the second son of the celebrated Dr. Benjamin 
 Rush of Pennsylvania: To have been brought up by his father, is to 
 be well educated ; for his communicative temper and habits made him 
 a preceptor, continually imparting to those around him the patriotism, 
 philanthrophy, morals, learning, manners, industry, and emulation, of 
 which he was an example as well as teacher, who left the world re- 
 plenished with his principles and pupils. Richard Rush was born in 
 Philadelphia, in August, 1780, and is now therefore tifty-nine years old, 
 enjoying a degree of bodily as well as mental activity and health un- 
 usual at that period. After having been at the usual preparatory 
 schools, "he was entered in the college at Princeton, at the age of 
 fourteen, at which institution his father, and his maternal grandfather, 
 Richard Stockton of New Jersey, had both been educated, both of 
 whom were Signers of the Declaration of Independence. \ During 
 his college life he lived in part at the house of his grandmother, Mrs. 
 Stockton, then living in Princeton, known in her day for her literary 
 
 * Reprinted from the Democratic Review, for April, 1840, No. XXVIII. — 
 " Political Portraits with Pen and Pencil, No. XVIII." 
 
4 RICHARDRUSH, 
 
 attainments, and who wrote those patriotic stanzas beginning 'Wel- 
 come, Mighty Chief, once more !' sung by young ladies of Trenton when 
 strewing flowers before General Washington at the triumphal arch 
 in that town in '89 — stanzas that Marshall has made in some measure 
 historic by giving them a place in his account of Washington's memo- 
 rable journey from Mount Vernon on going on to New York to be in- 
 stalled as President. 
 
 At college, though but little addicted to hard study, he was fond of 
 debate and public speaking, for which intellectual exercises he early 
 exhibited the germs of future excellence. >|He took his degree in the 
 autumn of 1797 — ^being the youngest in a class of thirty-three. \ Imme- 
 dijftely upon his graduation, he commenced the study of the law in the 
 office of William Lewis, Esq., then one of the leaders of the Phila- 
 delphia Bar. \ 
 
 The year following the whole country was in a state of martial ex- 
 citement, under the wrongs and insults of France. The youth of the 
 country poured in their addresses to the President, Mr. Adams, with 
 a tender of their services in case of war ; and young Rush, then seven- 
 teen years of age, did not hold back from the general feeling, though 
 he was not of " MacPherson's Blues." This fervor of the country 
 did not last long, neither invasion nor war having followed, except 
 partial hostilities with France upon the ocean, where, as usual, our 
 flag was triumphant. /Towards the latter part of his time with Mr. 
 Lewis, he gave himself up to close study, and was admitted to the bar in 
 December, 1800, when but little over twenty. His habits were at this 
 period formed to laborious self-discipline and culture. During the six 
 or seven years that followed, being still a member of his father's family, 
 and having little practice in his profession, he did not cease liis devo- 
 tion to study, making the night "joint laborer with the day," and, al- 
 though of a robust and strong constitution, endangering his health by 
 the intensity of his application. The law, liistory, ancient and modern 
 literature, government, the orators, the poets — these were the fields 
 into which he went, reading the best authors. He formed at this time 
 that intellectual habit so effective in the acquisition and retention of 
 knowledge, and so beneficial to the mind itself, of digesting by reffec- 
 tion all that he read, i Every volume received the full power of his 
 attention ; important facts or thoughts were recalled, and entered in 
 his own language in common-place books, and a short criticism and 
 opinion passed upon many of them when finished. / por, among the 
 other studies which engrossed at this period the industrious energies 
 of his mind, was that of politics forgotten, although he took no active 
 
OFPENNSYI, VANIA. 5 
 
 part in«them at this period of liis life. If his personal and professional 
 associates were the Federalists of Philadelphia, he had deeply im- 
 bibed from his father, in early life, the republican principles of Mr. 
 Jefferson and Mr. Madison. The former, in the beautiful letter, pub- 
 lished among his works, that he wrote on religion to Dr. Rush in 
 1803, begins by saying : " In some of my delightful conversations with 
 you in the evenings of 1798 — '99 (the black cockade days*), and which 
 served as an antiflote to the afflictions of the crisis through which our 
 country was then laboring, the Christain religion was our topic." It 
 was from such fountains the son took in political principles which 
 throughout a life now not short have emphatically governed him. 
 
 The first political meeting which he ever attended was one held in 
 the State House Yard in Philadelphia, in 1807, on the occasion of the 
 attack by the British on oiu: frigate Chesapeake. He had up to this 
 time been known only as an ambitious and extremely studious young 
 member of the bar. He made an animated and vigorous speech on 
 the subject of the wrongs we had received from England generally, 
 and on this last outrage in particular, which was received with the 
 warmest applause, and introduced him most favorably to the Repub- 
 lican party. Hitherto known but little as a public speaker, he was 
 now looked upon as destined to eminence in this field. The year fol- 
 lowing brought him for the first time into professional notice, fin 
 1808, in a speech that occupied the principal part of the day, he de- 
 fended the Editor of the Aurora, Colonel Duane, who was prosecuted 
 by the Commonwealth for a libel upon Governor McKean. This 
 speech endeared him very much to his democratic fellow-citizens. 
 There was a soundness in its political doctrines, and an eloquent fear- 
 lessness in its whole character, that seemed to entrench him at once 
 in their warm affections. As an incident illustrative of the effect pro- 
 duced upon the friends of Colonel Duane by Mr. Rush's powerful ap- 
 peal for his client, it may be stated, that one of the oldest democrats, 
 
 ♦ During the black cockade days, Cobbett, then the great leader of the Federal 
 press in the United States, under the name of ' Peter Porcupine,' put Dr. Rush on 
 his proscriptive list with Mr. Jeflerson, avowedly on the ground of his republican 
 principles. The latter he used to call "Tom the Devil ;" the former he alternate- 
 ly ridiculed as a quack and denounced as a murderer. Such was the treatment 
 that our most illustrious citizens received at the hands of this British renegado and 
 Federal favorite in the days of Federal supremacy. Dr. Rush, in a beautiful eulo- 
 gium pronounced on Mr. Rittenhouse, had e.xpatiated on his republican principles ; 
 which when Cobbett read, he exclaimed, " Fll mark himfor that," and the venom 
 of his press was accordingly poured without measure upon him. 
 
6 RICHARORUSH, 
 
 who heard it, embraced him when he concluded, and took hiA up in 
 his arms, while loud plaudits were heard throughout the court room. 
 After this speech business at the bar poured in upon him rapidly. In 
 this connexion he has often spoken, and always in terms of grateful 
 acknowledgment, of the early professional friendship he received from 
 the present Judge Hopkinson of Philadelphia, in all ways in which it 
 could be cordially afforded to a young tyro at the bar./ 
 
 . At the succeeding Congressional election, that patriarch of the demo- 
 cratic party in those days, and friend of Mr. Jefferson, Thomas Leiper,* 
 together with Col. Duane and Dr. Lieb called on Mr. Rush and asked 
 him to allow his name to be placed among the candidates for Congress ; 
 but he declined, being at that epoch intent upon his profession. But 
 he continued to receive ever afterwards manifestations of marked 
 attachment and confidence from these and other champions of the demo- 
 cratic cause. } Colonel Duane was unbounded in his thankfulness for 
 his defence of him, and sent him a large fee — which was declined, 
 Mr. Rush considering him as a persecuted man. \ Public bodies in Phi- 
 ladelphia, composed of democrats, now spontaneously made him their 
 counsel and solicitor, as the Board of Health, the Guardians of the 
 Poor, and other democratic functionaries, of the Northern Liberties.] 
 / In January, 1811, Governor Snyder appointed him Attorney Gene- 
 ral of Pennsylvania. His practice was now increasing daily. In 
 the spring of this year a misunderstanding between Mr. BroAvn and 
 himself (Peter A. Brown, Esq., of the Philadelphia Bar) led to a duel. 
 Neither party received any injury, and it is to the credit of both, that 
 the event did not interrupt the courtesy of their subsequent intercourse. 
 As Attorney General, he was necessarily brought into much inter- 
 course and correspondence with Governor Snyder and his associates 
 in the State administration, then consisting of the powerful democrats 
 of the State of that era, viz. : Mr Findlay, afterwards Governor of the 
 State, now Treasurer of the Mint ; General Porter, father of the pre- 
 sent Governor ; Mr. Boileau, Mr. Bryant, and Mr. Cochrane — the 
 esteem and confidence of all whom, as well as of the members of the 
 Legislature whom he used to see in his visits on business to the 
 seat of the State government, he gained in a high degree. J 
 
 At this point of time, and a little earlier, national politics had grown 
 
 *Mr. Jefferson was heard to say, that the tables of Dr. Rush, Major Butler, of 
 South Carolina, and Mr. Leiper, were the only ones in Philadelphia to which he was 
 ever invited during those days of Federal persecution ; and that the Federalists 
 used to cross the streets to avoid him, 
 
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 to be of intense interest. The state of our relations with both Eng-- 
 land and France, the multiplied wrongs wc had received from both, 
 and the peculiar aggravation and malignity of those from England, as 
 they included impressment and the killing of our citizens with her 
 cannon off our shores, rendered a war with one or the other country 
 almost inevitable. fHome questions of a highly exciting nature also 
 existed, and were of daily discussion in the press; among others, 
 that of renewing the charter of the old Bank of the United States. 
 The files of the Aurora, of which Col. Duane was still Editor, con- 
 tain Mr. Rush's contributions on this subject against the renewal of 
 the charter, on Mr. Madison's original ground of its unconstitution- 
 ality. His father, though never in active politics, nor at all a party 
 man, after the Revolutionary struggle ended, was nevertheless always 
 opposed in his opinions to the banking and paper systems, and corres- 
 ponded with Mr. Madison on the funding system ; in the strong con- 
 demnation of which he joined. The son had been deeply indoctri- 
 nated in the same opinions. Hence his opposition to the recharter 
 of the late Bank of the United States is in imison with his early con- 
 victionsjl as has been the case with thousands, owing to the usurpa- 
 tions of the late bank ; for these usurpations all honorable and cor- 
 rect merchants, like the Presidents of the first Bank of the United 
 States, old Thomas Willing of Philadelphia, and David Lenox, though 
 of the Federal party, would have joined in condemning, as having 
 sprung from a reckless school of foul and unwarrantable speculation, 
 not from any of their maxims of banking. Thomas Willing would 
 have gone to the rack before he would have issued as currency the 
 notes of a defunct bank, and have brought downupon himself a penal 
 statute from Congress. 
 
 |In November, 1811, on the appointment of the late Judge Duval 
 to the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, Mr. Madi- 
 son, then President, immediately nominated Mr. Rush to the office of 
 Comptroller of the Treasury, which Judge Duval had vacated. This 
 appointment was entirely unexpected by him, as it had been unsought ; 
 but it seems to have been peculiarly acceptable to the democratic 
 party of his State, whose favor and confidence he universally enjoyed, 
 to an extent never surpassed perhaps by any one at his age. He de- 
 cUned accepting this appointment at first, but wrote to the Secretary 
 of State, on receiving the commission, asking time to deliberate. [He 
 did not accept it until he had ascertained from that source, that its 
 duties would raise no official impediment to the occasional exercise 
 of his profession in the Supreme Court at Washington, should he in- 
 
8 niCHARDRUStt, 
 
 clinc to do so. The ensuing January he removed with his family, 
 having married a southern lady, to Washington. 
 
 The friendship between his father and Mr. Madison was a good 
 passport to the kind dispositions of the latter towards him on his first 
 arrival in Washington ; and it was his good fortune to gain the esteem 
 and friendship of that great and good man, and to have been honored 
 with Iris confidence ever afterwards. 
 
 jThe war having been declared against England in June, 1812, Mr. 
 Rush was selected to deliver a public oration in Washington on the 
 4th of July immediately following. The occasion was a marked one, 
 and the auditory not less so, consisting of the President, Heads of 
 Department, nearly all the members of both Houses of Congress, 
 besides citizens and strangers — the foreign ministers among the lat- 
 ter. It was delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives, 
 and made a large addition to his rising reputation. J It has been pre- 
 served among the repositories of American eloquence ; and no more 
 need here be said of it than barely to remark, that in portraying the 
 causes of the war, in order to prove that it was both just and neces- 
 sary, the views which he gave of the question of impressment show- 
 ed a perfect knowledge of that whole subject, and have left on record 
 an ejcposition of 'it, whether as to argument or rhetoric, force or fire, 
 not easy to have been surpassed on such an occasion ; parts of which 
 hare passed into the national classicality of our school-books as mo- 
 dels of patriotic eloquence. JAs the contest proceeded, few persons 
 in the country did more towards causing its true nature to be rightly 
 understood. His mind and pen were always active and ardent in ex- 
 plaining and upholding the cause of his country ; in exhortation and 
 encouragement under the incessant attacks of the Federalists upon 
 the Administration ; the effects of whose opposition undoubtedly were 
 to strengthen the hands of the public enemy. The columns of the 
 National Intelhgencer, then the great Democratic paper of the Go- 
 vernment and nation, and the Democratic press of Philadelphia, were 
 the influential channels through which his patriotic productions chief- 
 ly reached the public ; the latter paper, conducted by his zealous 
 friend Colonel Binns, having first given circulation to his communi- 
 cations under the signature of" John Dickinson " — the same signature 
 that he adopted while explaining at a later day, in the Globe, the po- 
 licy of General Jackson in regard to the French treaty of indemnity. 
 In the session of 1813 his early friend Mr. C. J. Ingersoll, then in 
 the House of Representatives, was his guest in Washington ; and their 
 efforts were united, as they have been since, in the cause of their 
 
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 country, the former being at that time her zealous and eloquent cham- 
 pion in Congress. In the summer of 1814, when the war was as- 
 suming its greatest fury, and Federal Opposition proportionably aug- 
 menting its own, Mr. Rush addressed a letter to the Mayor of Phila- 
 delphia, apprising him of Admiral Cochrane's hostile intentions along 
 our shores, before his incendiary proclamations were made public ; 
 for which letter he received torrents of Federal abuse. ■ A few weeks 
 afterwards Washington was sacked, its edifices, dedicated to the 
 peaceful arts, and to legislation, burnt, Baltimore approached, and 
 Philadelphia threatened. 
 
 /in Febniary, 1814, the posts of Secretary of the Treasury and 
 Attorney General being vacant, the former by the resignation of Mr. 
 Pinckney, the latter by Mr. Gallatin having overstaid the time it was 
 kept open for him while engaged in negotiations for peace abroad, 
 Mr. Madison placed either post at Mr. Rush's disposal, leaving the 
 decision with himself. He was then thirty-three years of age. He 
 went into the latter, and thus, as a member of the Cabinet, became 
 associated with the President in his official, as he had already pos- 
 sessed his personal, confidence.]/ His habits of investigation and 
 study, especially in the field of public law, had laid the best foundation 
 for a knowledge of the high duties of this important station. For 
 their discharge he was accordingly always found ready ; and by re- 
 siding in Washino^n, and ceasing to practice in other courts, he was 
 always at hand.) /One of his early acts was a letter to the District 
 Attorney of Massachusetts on the subject of our citizens holding inter- 
 course with the enemy by going on board of their ships within our 
 waters or off the coasts ; in the course of which, with the lights of a 
 mind imbued with the principles applicable to the belligerent 
 and neutral state of nations, and cognizant of the political obligations 
 of the citizen, he discriminated the cases of lawful and unlawful inter- 
 course with the enemy, j This letter was published in the National 
 Intelligencer and elsewhere, and had its effect in helping to dissemi- 
 nate correct views on a subject so important ; and jthe general sound- 
 ness of the opinions he gave to the different departments of the 
 Government, in all the variety and complication of its service in a 
 state of war, and the changing face of things on a return to peace, 
 has never been called in question.! (It may be added, that with the 
 exception of one of the terms oTthe Supreme Court, when he was 
 prostrated by a dangerous illness, during which he was consoled by a 
 daily visit at his bed-side from Mr. Madison for nearly four weeks, 
 he was never found wanting in the prompt and efficient performance 
 
 2 
 
10 RICHARDRUSH, 
 
 of his duty before that high and imposing tribunal, being always ready 
 to proceed with the causes of the United States as they were called 
 on for argument. j/\Vhile a member of the Cabinet, he kept a minute, 
 as long the war lasted, of what passed at every Cabinet meeting, and 
 did the same of events from the first breaking out of the war ; noting 
 down from time to time his conversations with Mr. Madison when 
 carrying with them a public interest. Nor must the fact be omitted, 
 that as a cabinet councillor, though youngest in the body, he was the 
 strenuous and unshaken advocate for the most vigorous war measures 
 ati^ainst the enemy, which the Federalists, at every stage of the war, 
 were endeavoring to paralyze and check ; not only by their rancor- 
 ous opposition to Mr. Madison, whom at last they were for sending to 
 Elba with Bonaparte, but by constantly holding out delusive expecta- 
 tions of peace — declaring always that the British desired it, but that 
 our Administration did not. In proportion to the zeal with which Mr. 
 Rush was known to oppose these and similar unpatriotic and false 
 allegations, did he draw dov/n Federal hostility, and become an object 
 of its unsparing attacks.j 
 
 fvl'^hile Attorney General, an Act of Congress devolved upon him, in 
 conjunction with the Secretary of State, then Mr. Monroe, the duty of 
 prescribing the plan and manner in which a new edition of the laws 
 of the United States should be published. As the first law officer of 
 the Government, the execution of this duty was chiefly assumed by 
 Mr. Rush. He submitted his plan, which was a comprehensive one, 
 to the Secretary of State, by whom it was approved in all its parts. 
 It directed for the first time 'the republication at large of all repealed 
 or expired laws and treaties, in order that the progress and history of 
 our whole system of federal legislation, as well as of our international 
 relations, might be traced by easy reference to every law or treaty 
 that had ever had existence in our code. It directed the examination 
 of the journals of the old Congress during the Confederation, with a 
 view to the republication in full of all such acts or ordinances as 
 affected the territorial domahi of the States or Union ; or as might serve 
 to connect, by a short chronological series, the early oflicial acts of 
 the Revolutionary Government, or those of the Confederation between 
 '83 and '89, with the formation of the present Constitution of the 
 United States. The whole work was superintended by Mr. Rush 
 with the greatest care, and forms the edition of 1815 in five volumes.] 
 The first volume, which comprises the documents last described, con- 
 tains a body of ancient and fundamental law belonging to our Federal 
 and Slate systems of government, than which no other of the same com- 
 
OFPENNSYLVANIA. H 
 
 pass is more valuable at the present day to the student of our political 
 history and to the jurist ; and none is more authentic, since every 
 document v^fas invariably collated with the original roll deposited in 
 the Department of State, where the original roll existed. His plan is 
 published at the commencement of the edition, and may be consulted 
 with advantage by any one desirous of embodying in the best forms 
 the statutory code of any of our States, as it has formed the model for 
 that of the Union. 
 
 (On Mr. Monroe's installation in the Presidency, in March, 1817, he 
 appointed Mr. Adams Secretary of State, recalling him from the Lon- 
 don mission where he then was. Until he could arrive in the United 
 States, Mr. Rush was commissioned by the President to act as Secre- 
 tary of States'/This appointment being temporary, only a partial share 
 of its duties devolved upon him. He corresponded with the Spanish 
 Minister, Mr. Onis, on our relations with Spain ; held interviews with 
 the Abbe Correa, Minister from Portugal — but still better known as 
 the venerable sage and philosopher of Portugal, and friend of Mr. 
 JefTerson — on our relations with that country produced by the revolu- 
 tion in Pernambuco ; and concluded an arrangement with the British 
 Minister, Mr. Bagot, by which it was stipulated that Great Britain 
 and the United States should reciprocally dismantle their naval forces 
 upon the northern lakes, limiting it to one vessel on each of the lakes, 
 of not more than one hundred tons burden, and armed with only one 
 eighteen pound cannon, j This was the principal diplomatic business 
 which added itself to the ordinary routine of the home business of the 
 Department during the season he was connected with it. But he has 
 often spoken of it as one that afforded him a rich treat by the oppor- 
 tunities it opened to him of reading, in the original, the correspondence 
 of our early and illustrious diplomatic men — Franklin, the elder Adams, 
 Jefferson, Jay, and others of Revolutionary fame. The volumes con- 
 tainino^ it were sent to his house after office hours, and he was enabled 
 to revel in these pages of political wisdom, sagacity, and knowledge, 
 from men whose names may be said to mark an era in diplomatic 
 history, and the treasures of whose minds are generally conveyed in 
 a style of such classic purity. Mr. Adams arrived in the United 
 States towards the latter end of the summer, and soon afterwards en- 
 tered upon the duties of the Department, of which Mr. Rush had been 
 the incumbent for six months. 
 
 [The contest for Governor between Mr. Findlay and Mr. Heister 
 comincr on at about this time in Pennsvlvania, Mr. Rush's devotion to 
 the interests and prosperity of his State would not allow him to be a 
 
12 R I C H A R D R U S H , 
 
 mere spectator of it althougli residing in Washington. He took an 
 active part in the election with his pen, exerting his utmost zeal in 
 favor of the Democratic candidate, Mr. Findlay, who was taken up as 
 the successor of Governor Snyder — that pure patriot and wise Chief 
 Magistrate, so long the favorite and boast of Pennsylvania. One of 
 his pieces that appeared in the Democratic press was republished in 
 Philadelpliia in the pamphlet form, and circulated throughout the State 
 with acknowledged advantage. He had the satisfaction to witness the 
 success of his friend and candidate, Mr. Findlay, in opposition to his 
 Federal competitor. ] 
 
 On the 31st of October, 1817, the President appointed Mr. Rush 
 Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of 
 Great Britain. It may be supposed that his previous pursuits and 
 training had qualified him for this new station, which came to him as 
 unsolicited as it was naturally gratifying at his time of life. It opened 
 at that era of our affairs a wide and dignified sphere of public duty. 
 The war with Great Britain over, it became an important object 
 with our Government to settle a great number of questions remain- 
 ing unadjusted with that nation, the discussion of which in time of 
 peace might give better hope of useful results than had ever been 
 accomplished anterior to the war, when practical wrongs were con- 
 stantly producing an irritated state o1 feeling between the two coun- 
 tries. To Mr. Rush were to be confided the high duties and negotia- 
 tions to be entered upon in these hopes. Mr. Adams, with his happy 
 command of resources for compliment, as of resources for everything, 
 perceiving that while temporarily in the Department of State he had 
 been aiming to make himself acquainted with our foreign affairs, 
 jocosely remarked, before he took his departure for England, that he 
 should have to treat him as Henry IV. did Sully when he sent 
 him as ambassador to England — " make him write his own instruc- 
 tions." With the ample and able ones of Mr. Adams, Mr. Rush em- 
 barked with his family from Annapolis for London in November, 1817, 
 in the Franklin seventy-four. Commodore Stewart. 
 
 The incumbent of the London mission is at all times loaded with a 
 crowded variety of business, direct and incidental ; and it would be in 
 vain, in a limited sketch like this, to attempt an enumeration of a 
 tithe of all that fell into Mr. Rush's hands while on this mission, 
 during the prolonged term of more than seven years. His official 
 correspondence, which maybe seen in some six or eight folios in the 
 Department of State, attests that he was no idler. He wrote also 
 largely to the President in the shape of private and informal letters, 
 
OFPENNSYLVANIA. 13 
 
 from the first year of his residence to the last, besides maintaining, 
 under Mr. Adams's instructions, a regular correspondence with all our 
 foreign ministers and diplomatic agents in Europe and on this conti- 
 nent ; in order that in that great centre of political and commercial 
 affairs where he was stationed, he might be constantly receiving and 
 imparting information to bear usefully on the knowledge of our own 
 foreign interests in all their broadest relations. The first regular 
 negotiation upon which he entered with the British government was 
 in August, 1818, in conjunction with Mr. Gallatin. The subjects 
 brought into it were manifold — 1 . The slave question under the treaty 
 of Ghent. 2. The Fisheries. 3. The North Western Boundary line, 
 and Columbia River questions. 4. The renewal of the commercial 
 convention of 1815. 5. The intercourse between the United States 
 and British West India Islands, and that between the United States 
 and their North American colonies, inland and by sea. 6. Impress- 
 ment. 7. The law of blockade. 8. The colonial trade in tim.c of 
 war. 9. The law of contraband, and various minor questions. After 
 ample discussions, which continued until the 20th of October, the 
 plenipotentiaries of the two nations agreed upon and signed on that 
 day a treaty or convention, by which the following points, from among 
 the above contested ones, were arranged : — 1. The Fisheries, securing 
 to us the right to fish off certain coasts and islands of the British pos- 
 sessions north of us, and within their bays and harbors ; whereby an 
 imminent prospect of colUsion between the two countries was prevent- 
 ed, the British contending that we had lost all our fishing rights under 
 the old treaty of 1783 by the war of 1812 ; which we denied. 2. The 
 boundary line from the Lake of the Woods. 3. An article effecting 
 a temporary arrangement of claims beyond the Rocky Mountains and 
 to the Columbia River. 4. A prolongation for ten years of the commer- 
 cial convention then in existence between the t\vo countries. And 5. an 
 article that laid the foundation, through an umpirage by the Emperor 
 of Russia, of ind<imnification to our southern citizens whose slaves 
 had been carried oflf by the British ships at the close of the last war, 
 in violation of the treaty of Ghent. Besides the joint official despatch 
 from Mr. Gallatin and himself, containing the report of this negotia- 
 tion, with all the arguments, as published among our State Papers, 
 Mr. Rush transmitted to Mr. Monroe a full account of it in a separate 
 communication taken from his own private journal kept of every day's 
 proceeding. 
 
 He did not, while in England, confine his attention or his commu- 
 nications to business strictly official, but extended both over a wider 
 
14 RICHARDRUSH, 
 
 surface, in the hope of making his public residence there useful to 
 his country in other things. On the state of European politics ge- 
 nerally he wrote whenever deriving information from sources other 
 than those opened by the press to all ; and it was his habit once a 
 year to present to the Secretary of State — from personal observation 
 and inquiries, parliamentary documents examined and digested, and 
 all other sources, of information accessible — general views of 
 the internal state of the British Empire, as regarded commerce, ma- 
 nufactures, her institutions of public force and finance, and other sta- 
 tistical matter. To the great naval establishments of England he 
 gave, at all intervals, an especial attention ; visiting several times, 
 from an ardent attachment to the interests and glory of our own navy, 
 and a personal fondness for such inquiries, the great naval arsenals 
 of England, and transmitting, as voluntary communications to the 
 Navy Department, or board of Navy Commissioners, or to some one 
 of our naval constructors, whatever struck him during these visits that 
 appeared to be worthy of note. He did the same — and particularly in 
 letters to Commodore Rodgers as President of the Na\y Board, and 
 to Commodore Decatur as his personal correspondent — whenever ob- 
 taining, through his intercourse with those who directed the naval 
 administration of England, information that he thought might be of 
 use ; carefully mentioning new plans that were executing or project- 
 ed, and new inventions for carrying forward naval science. 
 
 The execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, for joining the Semi- 
 nole Indians who were at war with us, raised at first a prodigious 
 flame in England. The fact of the commanding general of an Ame- 
 rican army hanging two British subjects contrary to the sentence of 
 a court martial, was at first blush startling to the English. They 
 could not understand it, and seemed horror-struck. This event de- 
 volved upon Mr. Rush an important and delicate duty. The stocks 
 fell under the first shock of the news, from an apprehension that war 
 would follow. Our Minister was anxiously looked 'to by the British 
 government for the necessary explanations. Note upon note came to 
 him from Lord Castlereagh bearing the endorsement, " Immediate." 
 His interviews with him were frequent and prolonged, and with what 
 discretion, united to firmness, he carried himself on that whole occa- 
 sion, his oflicial despatches to our Government will attest. He had 
 to defend General Jackson against the whole array of the British Ca- 
 binet, with Lord Castlereagh, Lord Liverpool, and Mr. Canning in 
 the van, one and all of them prejudiced against him in the beginning, 
 in common with the British public at large and both Houses of Par- 
 
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 15 
 
 liament, to an extent not easy to be conceived— to such an extent in- 
 deed that Lord Castlereagh declared, that " war might have been pro- 
 duced hy holding up a finger:' Wretch, tyrant, ruffian, murderer, sa- 
 vage of hell, were among the epithets that the newspapers of Lon- 
 don lavished upon him. Mr. Rush has often recurred to this period, 
 in conversation with his friends, as one of extraordinary interest, and 
 to himself as the most anxious of his mission ; mentioning among 
 other anecdotes, that a deformed and hideous picture of the General 
 was paraded in the streets, the men who held it up on a pole bellow- 
 ing forth, in vociferous repetition, " Jackson the Murderer !" 
 But the defence of our hero, while an anxious task, was triumphantle 
 accomplished on all the points on which he had been assailed, by thy 
 patriotic zeal, knowledge and conciliatory course of Mr. Rush, aided 
 by the powerful and just exposition which Mr. Adams had given of 
 the case in his celebrated letter to Mr. Erving, our Minister in Spain, 
 a copy of wliich was sent to him. Mr. Rush distinctly justified our 
 heroic and traduced chief on the ground of humanity as well as all 
 the grounds of public law ; and showed the imperious necessity of 
 making an example of these two men, who, worse a great deal than 
 the savages themselves, stirred up the latter to the butchery of our 
 citizens along the frontier, and to the slaughter of whole families, wo- 
 men and children included, in methods of atrocity to make humanity 
 shudder. 
 
 /Mr. Tompkins was at this time Vice-President of the United States, 
 but was taken up in 1820 as candidate for Governor in New York, 
 and ran against Mr. Ghnton. Had he been chosen, a vacancy would 
 have existed in the Vice-Presidency, and the country was beginning 
 to bend its thoughts towards a successor to Mr. Tompkins in the event 
 of this contingency. A Democratic Convention that assembled that 
 year at Lewistown in Pennsylvania, from all parts of the State, for the 
 re-nomination of Governor Findlay, that able head of the party at 
 that time and sterling champion of their principles and cause at ail 
 times, also nominated Mr. Rush, although in England, for the Vice- 
 Presidency, in case the contingency in question should occur — the 
 most signal mark of confidence that could then have been reposed in 
 him by the Democracy of Pennsylvania. JTo so impressive and endear- 
 ing an evidence of confidence and affection from his native State he 
 was deeply sensible, and clung to it as a proud trophy in a foreign 
 land. To be remembered at all when absent is gratifying — to be so 
 remembered doubly gratifying, as it holds up to the world of strangers 
 
16 mCHARDRtlSH, 
 
 an authentic proof of qualities and merits being appreciated where 
 they have been longest and best knoxNOi. 
 
 A remarkable incident in Mr. Rush's mission to England was the 
 overture of Mr. Canning to him in the summer and autumn of 1823 
 on the subject of the Spanish American, states. It had been a regular 
 part of his duty to watch over the interests of these rising states, a 
 duty which he never failed zealously to perform, above all in striving 
 to conciliate, in all just ways and upon all proper occasions, the good 
 will of the Court and Cabinet of England in their behalf ; towards 
 which end he had repeated interviews with Lord Castlereagh in all 
 the earlier parts of his mission, and there are authentic testimonials 
 of the good service he rendered to the great cause of human liberty 
 in South America in these ways during his mission. At his domicil 
 the informal representatives and agents of the new states who flocked 
 to London throughout a period of five years, found a hospitable recep- 
 tion, social countenance, and the warmest political sympathy; to 
 which the Garcia del Rios, the Paroissiens, the Ravengas, and other 
 distinguished names of the new states, could bear testimony. But in 
 the autumn of 1823, their cause, prosperous as it had been up to that 
 time, began to look gloomy. France, under the old Bourbons, had 
 made war upon the constitutional system of Spain ; the Duke D'An- 
 cTouleme had crossed the Bidassoa, with a French army of eighty 
 thousand men, and announced in his proclamations, almost in direct 
 words, an intention, in which the Holy Alliance were to join, of 
 stretchino- their united arms across the ocean to reinslave Spanish 
 America as soon as they should have cloven down liberty in old 
 Spain. The French troops were rapidly making their way through 
 Spain, and Cadiz, the last strong-hold of the constitutional party, was 
 soon expected to fall. England got alarmed. Mr. Canning was then 
 Foreign Secretary. He approached Mr. Rush, as the plenipotentiary 
 of the United States, to sound him on the policy of the two nations 
 interposing, by some formal convention or other joint act, their influ- 
 ence and determination to check the execution of the dangerous 
 schemes of this unholy confederacy of Emperors and Kings. Notes 
 passed and conferences were held of a highly confidential nature 
 between the two functionaries, which have never been published by 
 either Government. It is generally understood that Mr. Rush declined 
 pledging his Government to anything, unless England would place 
 herself in equal condition with the United States, by acknowledging, 
 as the latter had then done, the independence of the new states, as- 
 
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 17 
 
 signing his reasons why she should take this step. In that event Mr. 
 Rush declared his readiness to throw himself in the breach, and as- 
 sume the responsibility of taking the joint measure proposed by Eng- 
 land, though without instructions from his Government, for which 
 there was no time to wait. England declined to take at that time the 
 step which Mr. Rush required. The latter kept our Government 
 fully informed of what was going on by the earliest possible opportu* 
 nities, and had the satisfaction to receive its approbation of his whole 
 course under an emergency so critical. This was the more accepta- 
 ble to him as he was thrown entirely upon his own judgment from 
 the beginning to the end of the emergency. Mr. Monroe was heard to 
 say, that if the Cabinet had been at his elbow, step by step, he could 
 not have acted more to his satisfaction. His communications were 
 the key to those memorable declarations in Mr. Monroe's Message of 
 the second of December, 1823, received with such enthusiasm by the 
 whole country, that the United States could not behold such an inter- 
 position by the Holy Alliance " in any form with indifference ;" and 
 that "the American continents, by the free and independent condition 
 which they had assumed and maintained, were henceforth not to he con- 
 sidered as subjects jor filture colonization by any European power." 
 
 In Stapleton's Life of Canning this important subject is touched, 
 the author remarking, that — " Towards the latter end of August, 1823, 
 Mr. Canning sounded Mr. Rush, the then JNIinister of the United 
 States in this country, as to whether in his opinion the moment were 
 not arrived when the two Governments of Great Britain and the United 
 States might not come to some understanding with each other on the 
 subject of the Spanish American Colonies ; and whether it would not 
 be expedient for themselves, and beneficial for the world, that the 
 principles of it should be clearly settled and plainly avowed." The 
 work adds : " As that gentleman's answer is written in the same 
 spirit of confidence, it will not be right, and fortunately it is not now 
 material, to state the nature of that answer, farther than to say that in 
 every respect it was highly creditable to its distinguished author." 
 
 Mr. Rush desired to return home to his country in 1823, and wrote 
 to Mr. Monroe to that effect. This was prevented by a very extensive 
 negotiation being put into his hands by the Government in that year, 
 which did not close until August, 1824. Its important and onerous 
 duties had the effect of prolonging his stay until the year following. 
 The negotiation was one of unusual compass, and embraced questions 
 of novelty as well as great magnitude. The right of the United States, 
 on grounds of natural as well as public law, to the navigation of the 
 
18 RICHARDRUSH, 
 
 River St. Lawrence in its whole length and breadth, to and from the 
 sea, was on this occasion for the first time brought into discussion 
 with Great Britain. Their right to the territory west of the Rocky 
 ^lountains, and their rights along the North West coast of America, 
 were also asserted and discussed in a manner far more full and expli- 
 cit than in his former negotiation jointly with Mr. Gallatin. The 
 West India Trade question, under various new lights since the former 
 negotiation, was most copiously treated ; the North Eastern Boundary 
 question, now grown to be so formidable, was handled under some 
 of its earlier aspects before being submitted to the King of Holland ; 
 several maritime questions of great moment, and various other points 
 and topics of high international concern, which it does not fall within 
 the purpose of such a sketch as this even to enumerate. Foreseeing 
 the great labor, and still more the responsibility, of so complicated a 
 negotiation, he was desirous of a colleague ; more especially as two 
 plenipotentiaries, Mr. Huskisson and Mr. Stratford Canning, were 
 appointed on the side of Great Britain, with the opportunity of con- 
 stant access to the British Cabinet during its progress. A special 
 Secretary was also appointed by England to keep the records of that 
 negotiation, — in so important a light was it regarded. That the Go- 
 vernment did not grant Mr. Rush a colleague must be taken as a proof 
 of its confidence in his unassisted ability and prudence. Mr. Adams's 
 instructions were full and able, as they always were to our foreign 
 Ministers ; but in the course of a negotiation of such m gnitude and 
 scope, it must needs have happened, and did, that he would be often 
 left to the resources of his own mind to solve difiiculties not antici- 
 pated, and meet discussions started by the occasion. His full report 
 of the whole negotiation at its close, though writing to the Govermnent 
 from time to time during its pendency, is contained in an official des- 
 patch to the Secretary of State dated the 12th of August, 1824, com- 
 prising sixty closely printed pages, as published by the Senate in Janu- 
 ary, 1825 ; which is not mentioned as a merit, but only as a proof of 
 the compass of its matter, its merit rather consisting in its condensa- 
 tion. Although no treaty was efiected by this negotiation — (except 
 one for a restricted concert of naval operations between the two pow- 
 ers against the slave trade, which the Senate did not ratify) — much 
 was done towards ascertaining the policy and views of Great Britain, 
 on many points of great importance, a little of which may be here 
 mentioned. She refused to entertain proposals from the United States 
 for abolishing privateering, and all war against private property upon 
 the ocean — a great consummation to humanity if it could be effected, 
 
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 19 
 
 and which the example of England and the United States probably 
 would have effected with all nations. But England turned away from 
 it instantly, under the proposals Mr. Rush made — in a manner scarcely 
 to have been expected, considering her overflowing zeal to get rid of 
 the slave trade. We are unavoidably driven to account for her de- 
 termination to continue practices so intrinsically barbarous, and the 
 principle of which has long been given up, among civilized nations 
 in war upon land, by recollecting her own large means of privateer- 
 ing, and capturing private property in war upon the ocean. She re- 
 fused to depart from the ground she had taken on impressment in the 
 negotiation of 1818 — that is, she would not surrender her alleged 
 right to enter our vessels on the high seas to search for her men, un- 
 less we would give her previous guarantees that none were on board, 
 of a nature that we had told her, in the negotiation of 1818, it was 
 not practicable to give. She scouted our claim to the navigation of 
 the St. Lawrence. She would hardly listen to it with patience, as 
 the protocols of the negotiation attest. She denied Mr. Monroe's prin- 
 ciple in regard to colonization on the American continents, declaring 
 her own right to colonize on all parts of it unoccupied, as fully as 
 when she made her Nootkah Sound convention with Spain in 1790. 
 She claimed the right of navigating, equally with ourselves, the Colum- 
 bia River ; and Mr. Rush is known to hold the opinion that we shall 
 probably not find it an easy task to obtain the recognition of our rights 
 from her west of the Rocky Mountains, or on the coast of the Pacific. 
 All these and other subjects of international concern between Great 
 Britain and this country are gone into with great care and research 
 in the despatch from him mentioned, to which the critical posture of 
 Gur afiairs with England at the present moment cannot fail to give 
 deep interest. He holds the opinion indeed, that she will proud.'y 
 and sternly cleave to her entire colonial dominion on this continent, 
 and be little likely to yield up any part of it without an earnest 
 struggle. 
 
 When Mr. Adams was chosen President by the House of Repre- 
 sentatives after the fierce contest among the four rival candidates in 
 1824, he appointed Mr. Rush Secretary of the Treasury, and called 
 him home to take charge of that Department. jHaving been so many 
 years out of the country, he had not participated in the angry strife 
 which that memorable election engendered ; but had taken post upon 
 the old democratic principle of the caucus, under which Mr. Jefierson 
 and Mr. Madison had been elected ; and was in favor of Mr. Craw- 
 ford, the caucus candidate. \ This being known through his private 
 
20 RICHARDRUSH, 
 
 correspondence, ihose of his Democratic fellow-citizens in Pennsyl- 
 vania who went for the same candidate placed his name at the head 
 of the Crawford electoral ticket, his return home being then expected 
 in time to vote, should that ticket succeedJ He left London in June, 
 1825, leaving behind him in England a high character, which a long 
 residence and large social intercourse had earned, both for solid quali- 
 ties and gentlemanly courtesy ; and arrived in the United States in 
 July. He found surrounding Mr. Adams, in the new Cabinet, Mr. 
 Clay, Mr. Barbour, Mr. Southard, Mr. Wirt — all of them men whose 
 public lives, like his own, had been identified up to that epoch 
 with the Democratic Party. Separated for some years from our home 
 affairs, and having given no special attention while abroad to our 
 Treasury concerns, it was his wish, on returning, if the President had 
 thought the change proper, that Mr. Southard should be in that De- 
 partment, and he be assigned to the Navy Department ; investigations 
 in the latter sphere having engaged large portions of his time and at- 
 tention in the great naval kingdom where he had been residing. The 
 President deciding against a change, he entered with great industry 
 upon the duties of the Treasury, devoting himself to them exclusively, 
 and with an application the most resolute. 
 
 /His reports to Congress while in that Department are now, like his 
 negotiations abroad, part of our history, and in that light will be 
 judged. He was a strenuous advocate for American manufactures, as 
 were nearly all the middle, northern, and western portions of the Union 
 at that time ; though our intervening history and present condition 
 have unavoidably changed the nature of that question, as was admit- 
 ted in a letter published by Mr. Rush himself last fall. He neither 
 advocated prohibition, nor permanent protection, as means of en- 
 cOMraging our manufactures — limiting his recommendations to such 
 aid only by law as would be required to give them a start against the 
 pre-existing skill and superior capital of older nations. He inculcated 
 uniformly and as strongly the policy of fostering the other great 
 branches of national industry in all ways just and practicable. A re- 
 duction of duties on teas and wines, still high when he came into tho 
 Department, were favorite measures with him ; and his full report to 
 the House of Representatives on the growth and manufacture of silk, 
 prepared and transmitted in 1828, in complianco with a previous call, 
 may be considered as having given the first impulse to that valuable pur- 
 suit among us, destined as is believed by many, to become at no distant 
 day so great and productive a source of home industry throughout the 
 United States, south, middle, east, and north. His ample report to the 
 
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 21 
 
 House of of Representatives in 1826, on an enlargement of the ware- 
 housing and drawback systems, is a direct appeal to Congress for en- 
 couraging, by legislative assistance in these ways, our commerce with 
 all parts of the world upon the broadest and most liberal scale. He 
 was for outstripping England in these as the liberal points in her com- 
 mercial system, instead of keeping behind her ; dwelling upon them 
 also as the points that had mainly conduced to the commercial 
 grandeur of Holland, and as especially proper for the United States to 
 make the most of, at an era when the emancipation of all Spanish 
 America opened such boundless fields to a new carrying trade, which 
 it was their true policy to seize upon. Thus, the partisan of no one 
 branch of industry in particular, his reports show an enlightened esti- 
 mate of the various interests of agriculture, manufactures, and com- 
 merce, all in combination, as the true road to national wealth and pow- 
 er ; and — whatever the degrees in which different readers may coin- 
 cide with or dissent from them — they evince a range of thought and fami- 
 liarity with the commercial policy of other nations now and heretofore, 
 especially England, that fully qualified him to counsel with the repre- 
 sentatives of the nation on the best means of promoting the nation's in- 
 terests in connexion with these large views which his sense of his duty 
 prompted him to suggest and develope from the Department he filled. / 
 
 Mr. Rush was was very much the slave of his office while in the Trea- 
 sury Department, never having been absent a day from its duties during 
 the three years and a half that he held it, except on one occasion 
 when he was confined to his house by a week's illness. (Towards 
 the close of Mr. Adams's Presidential term, his name was placed on 
 the ticket with that of Mr. Adams, as a candidate for the Vice-Pre- 
 sidency, and he received at the election that followed the same num- 
 ber of votes that Mr. Adams received for the Presidency — General 
 Jackson being then chosen President, and Mr. Calhoun Vice-President. I 
 
 He ceased to be Secretary of the Treasury in March, 1829, when 
 General Jackson's administration commenced, and a couple of months 
 afterwards went to England at the united request of the City of Wash- 
 ington and towns of Georgetown and Alexandria, to negotiate for them 
 a'loan of a million and a half of dollars, which Congress had authorized 
 them to make at six per cent., for the purpose of meeting their subscrip- 
 tions to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. The credit of these places 
 being supposed to be but little known in Europe, no sanguine expec- 
 tations of his success appear to have been entertained. There were 
 merchants in Baltimore who alleged that he would not obtain it under 
 twenty per cent., and bankers in Philadelphia who predicted that it 
 
22 
 
 RICHARD RUSH, 
 
 could not be got at all. His first attempts to get it in England were 
 not successful. In July he crossed over to Holland, where he was 
 also thwarted at first, and returned again to England, where he en- 
 countered adverse influences a second time ; and did not, as hinted 
 in his communications, consider himself as having been treated with 
 any extreme measure of liberality by the Barings. Staying in London 
 throughout the autumn, and waiting events, a correspondence was 
 opened between himself and the house of the Cromelines of Amsterdam 
 — that ancient house of scrupulous honor, and endeared to the United 
 States by having been first to trust them in their glorious but perilous 
 Revolutionary struggle. This correspondence was actively yet silent- 
 ly carried on for some months, and ended in Mr. Rush's obtaining the 
 whole loan at Jive and a half per cent., with which he returned home 
 in January, 1830. He made a full report of his proceedings to his 
 three constituents, and the City of Washington pubhshed it. The 
 municipal government of the City, and that of each of the towns, 
 passed resolutions approving of his course in the whole matter, and 
 thanking him for his judicious and successful exertions. This trip 
 to Europe renovated his health, which has since been uninterrupted. 
 Soon after his return he removed with his family to York, in Penn- 
 sylvania, his native State. To this change he was mainly impelled 
 from the more favorable opportunities it would afford of superintend- 
 ing the studies of his children, than a large or commercial city, and 
 from the attractive localities about that ancient town, once the seat of 
 our Revolutionary Congress. [The Antimasonic question was then 
 raging in Pennslyvania, and a new one to him. At leisure to exa- 
 mine it, he did so. Taught by his principles to regard combinations 
 and monopolies of all kinds as adverse to the interests and rights of 
 the many in favor of the few, he became convinced of the abuses to 
 which Masonry might be put in the hands of ill disposed and weak 
 minded men, and expressed his convictions fervidly in several public 
 letters, that circulated widely in those portions of the country where 
 the Antimasonic principle prevailed. These letters so recommended 
 him to the Antimasons, that the leading members of that party in Lan- 
 caster County, the head quarters of its strength in Pennsylvania, for- 
 mally solicited him in a public letter to let his name be held up among 
 those from whom they intended to select their candidate for the Pre- 
 sidency at their convention which was to meet in Baltimore in the 
 autumn of 1831. This he declined, having expressed his opinions 
 and written his letters with no selfish views. ( The convention, not 
 having Mr. Rush's name before it, nominated Mr. Wirt. It was 
 
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 23 
 
 scarcely doubted by any one, that Mr. Rush would have received the 
 nomination had he consented. 
 
 In 1 833 he removed to the county of Philadelphia, where he now 
 lives, at a maternal home. In September of this year came out Ge- 
 neral Jackson's famous cabinet paper setting forth the causes that made 
 it his duty to remove the public deposites from the custody of that per- 
 fidious institution, the Bank of the United States. Opposed to the re- 
 charter of the old Bank, Mr. Rush had, nevertheless, as a member of 
 Mr. Madison's cabinet in 1816, gone with that illustrious statesman, 
 with Alexander James Dallas, that renowned and accomplished cham- 
 pion of the democratic cause in those days, and a host of others of 
 the some faith, in concurring in a new Bank of the United State.^, 
 supposed to have become necessary, in the disordered state of the 
 finances which the factious efforts of Federalism to pull down 
 everything during the war had produced ; and with thousands of De- 
 mocrats, including all Democratic Pennslyvania, had sustained the 
 new bank while it acted honestly. But in General Jackson's expo- 
 siu-e of its misdeeds all such beheld the necessity of its downfall. 
 Mr. Rush in particular could not fail to see, in the democratic princi- 
 ples he would have applied to Antimasonry, a tenfold stronger ground 
 of alarm at the conduct of the Bank ; for here was an institution 
 whose sway was over the whole Union, using its unhmited millions 
 in corrupting the press and controlling the laws ; and these had been 
 the allegations against the associated power of Masonry — whether 
 rio-htfully or not, we are not now arguing. The difTerence was so 
 crreat, that any parallel would be absurd ; for while it was said by 
 Antimasons that the ties of the lodge influenced the administration of 
 law through the jury box, it was evident that the corporate power of 
 the Bank, wielding its tremendous money power, struck at the entire 
 root of legislation itself. It was able, as the end has shown, to set 
 at defiance the very Constitution of the United States, the latter pro- 
 viding that only gold and silver shall be money ; while this bank, by 
 its career of law-breaking, fraud, and despotism, has at length fairly 
 got the better of this Constitutional provision, and we have seen 
 through its means irredeemable rags legalized as money by the legis- 
 lators of several of the States. Hence it has undermined and uprooted 
 the very attributes and powers of popular sovereignty. 
 
 The timely and fearless stand he took in justifying the removal of 
 the deposites, as a step of imperious necessity and of the highest wis- 
 dom, was in unison with the democratic principles identified with his 
 education and his public life. It endeared him to the democratic 
 
24 RICHARD RtSH, 
 
 party of the nation, who had been no stranger to his early name and 
 lonf^ exertions in that field. He came to the rescue at a critical epoch, 
 when the timid and calculating held back, when some of the stoutest 
 hearts quailed under the terrifying proscriptions of the Bank of the 
 United States. The letters that he continued to write from time to 
 time, under calls made upon him, sometimes from States distant from 
 his own, through his well known national name, powerfully laid open 
 the enormities of that unprincipled institution, fit may perhaps be 
 affirmed that few, if any, of our public men among his contemporaries, 
 have been more before the public than Mr. Rush, as a political writer. 
 The posts he has held in the service of the Republic have made him 
 a writer, while all his intellectual aptitudes and personal qualities seem 
 calculated to have given him rank among its public speakers^ With 
 a mind of rich mould — an admirable knowledge of men — with informa- 
 tion gathered from a wide scope of lonely study and extended practi- 
 cal observation — with a ready command of language, advantages of 
 voice, ardor of temperament, controlled by judgment, purity and bold- 
 ness of heart — had his career thus far been in our national legislature, 
 rather than in executive and diplomatic duties, he would have found 
 before him a wide field for useful and distinguished service. But 
 these aptitudes and qualities have come to his aid in pohtical discus- 
 sion with his pen. His political essays are in a style popular, interro- 
 gatively argumentative, dignified, and bold. Restrained and mild in 
 all his personal relations, he applies the lash of argument, in the cause 
 of ofiended truth, with strong and skilful power of attack, and with 
 entire fearlessness. 
 / His strongest political essay, as a single production, is perhaps the 
 letter written by him in the fall past, to some of the citizens of Berks 
 County in his own State, and largely republished out of Pennsylvania. 
 The letter addressed to him asked his views upon the " questions of 
 financial policy connected with the Independent Treasury and the 
 present suspension of specie payments," and was from thirteen of the 
 truest and oldest names of that old democratic county. Mr. Rush's 
 reply has embodied and explained in a condensed and masterly way 
 the flagitious course of the Bank of the United States throughout 
 America and in Europe, as mainly causing the suspension ; takes 
 strong views of the necessity and advantages of the Independent 
 Treasury ; and particularly called public attention to the dangers the 
 Bank of the United States is bringing, and has already brought, upon 
 tlic highest interests of the foreign commerce of the United States. 
 He dwells upon the rapidly increasing facihties of commercial inter* 
 
OFPENNSYLVANIA. 25 
 
 course between England and India through the Arabian and Persian 
 Gulfs by means of steam, as likely to turn English attention to the culture 
 of cotton in India ; and charges it upon the Bank as the worst of all 
 offences against* the trade of the United States, that it should have 
 done its best towards making it England's interest to go on with this 
 culture of India cotton, by having, in its criminal avarice, piled up 
 monopolies of American cotton in the warehouses of Liverpool. His 
 views under this head are now but the more striking, as it has been 
 seen by a speech of Sir James C. Hobhouse, in the House of Com- 
 mons, on the 27th of February, who is a member of the Cabinet, and * 
 President of the India Board of Control, how seriously the English 
 are beginning to look to their possessions in India for their supplies 
 of raw cotton. 
 
 In the latter end of March, 1835, a most angry dispute existed 
 between the State of Ohio and the Territory of Michigan, on the sub- 
 ject of their respective boundaries. It had risen to such height that 
 the prospect of bloodshed seemed imminent. In this extremity Pre- 
 sident Jackson anxiously called upon Mr. Rush, in conjunction with 
 General Howard of Baltimore, to repair to the scene of dispute, in the 
 capacity of representatives of his friendly solicitude, and charged with 
 his constitutional powers as far as he could exert them, to ward off 
 so frightful a calamity among brethren of the same family. They 
 promptly consented, and there being not an hour to lose immediately 
 set off. Travelling day and night, they got to the scene of border 
 preparation and strife by the time desired. Though no final arrange- 
 ments were, or could have been, effected by them under the circum- 
 stances, their earnest mediation was zealously interposed between the 
 parties, with at least the advantage of a temporary abatement of their 
 exasperation, and gaining time for ulterior arrangements. They re- 
 turned after a few weeks' absence, their conduct, on that angry and 
 threatening emergency, meeting the President's entire approbation. 
 
 In the summer of 1836 Congress passed a law accepting the legacy 
 of about one hundred thousand pounds sterling that had been be- 
 queathed to the United States by James Smithson of London, for the 
 pvurpose of founding at Washington an institution " for the increase 
 and diffusion of knowledge among men ;" and authorized the President 
 to take measures for its recovery. General Jackson immediately ap- 
 plied to Mr. Rush to go to England for that purpose. I He had pre- 
 viously declined political office tendered to liim by General Jackson, 
 but acceded to his wishes, made known in a gratifying manner, to 
 take in hand this trust. / He arrived in London in September of that 
 
26 RICHARDRUSH, 
 
 year; and on Mr. Van Buren's election to the Presidency, in 1837, 
 was continued in the trust by a new commission from him. In August, 
 1838, he returned with the whole sum, upwards of one hundred and 
 four thousand pounds sterling, which was safely deposited in gold at 
 the Mint, to the credit of the United States, a few days after his arri- 
 val. The right of the United States to this bequest had got entangled 
 in the English Court of Chancery ; and the fidelity, promptitude and 
 economy with which Mr. Rush succeeded in vindicating their right, 
 and realizing the sum for the United States, are best attested by his 
 letters to the Government which have been published by Congress. 
 " Unfit as I am for Heaven," said Warburton, " I had rather hear the 
 last trumpet than a citation from the Court of Chancery to pass my 
 life there." Mr. Rush at least was more fortunate. This being the 
 latest trust with which he has been charged by his country, it is here 
 worthy of remark, that in all the public trusts committed to him 
 he has borne himself with the most perfect integrity, and been 
 scrupulously correct in all that related to money. His charges for 
 contingent outlays during his long mission to England, when sent to 
 Congress, drew notice from that body, and from the press, by their 
 smallness ; and no account, charge, nor item of any kind whatever, 
 has ever stood against him on the public books after he left an office. 
 While attending to this trust in London, he beheld day by day in 
 the newspapers there gross misrepresentations of the opinions and 
 policy of the anti-bank party in the United States, mingled with 
 coarse defamation of General Jackson and other high names of our 
 country belonging to that party — the whole stimulated by the Whig 
 papers of our ovm country that flowed in by every packet, to say 
 nothing of the Anglo-American houses in London, headed by the 
 Barings and their hangers-on, ever ready to lend countenance to it all. 
 In this condition of things, with no corrective to such perpetual mis- 
 statements and unworthy calumnies ever appearing in the London 
 newspapers — for none would publish it — Mr. Rush caused to be re- 
 printed there, in the form of a pamphlet, Mr. Van Buren's letter to 
 Sherrod Williams, written when the former was Vice-President ; by 
 which the London public, before whom the highest American names 
 were thus being held up in daily disparagement, might see, not a par- 
 tisan and scurrilous, but a statesman-like and gentleman-like view of 
 the bank question. For this act he was furiously abused on both sides 
 of the water, by the Whig papers of the United States and by the 
 London stock-jobbers. This was perhaps to have been expected ; 
 but it was not to have been expected, that for such an act of simple 
 
OFPENNSYLVANIA. 27 
 
 justice to the majority of his countrymen, and to the functionaries of 
 his Government in a foreign land, the extraordinary spectacle would 
 have been exhibited of his having been denounced by the Whig 
 Governor of Pennsylvania in a public message to the Legislature of 
 that State. Governor Ritner ought to have known better. He ought 
 to have known, as Mr. Rush believed, that the Pennsylvania Bank of 
 the United States, fraudulent in name as well as in nature, was at 
 that time tottering in its resources, and pursuing an unprincipled 
 course. Instead of denouncing Mr. Rush, his true duty, as a well in- 
 formed and moral Chief Magistrate, would have been to have de- 
 nounced the Bank ; whereby frauds upon a transcendant scale, and 
 mischiefs innumerable that have since burst to light, might have been 
 prevented, a mad career of dishonest speculation arrested, and the 
 American character saved from much odium abroad. Many of the 
 London stock-jobbers themselves, misled by the trickery of our own 
 stock-jobbers in the interest of that Bank, now doubtless wish they 
 had not turned so deaf an ear to Mr. Rush's safer coimsels, as the 
 enormous depreciation of its stock in the London market and every- 
 where gives such sensible reasons for inferring. 
 
 Mr. Rush's life, as we have seen, has been engrossed in various 
 departments of most important and honorable service to his country 
 at home and abroad — few of our distinguished men more so. So en- 
 grossed, there has not been much time to turn aside into the field of 
 letters, where in early life he would sometimes delight to roam. But 
 what we may term political and diplomatic Uterature has occasionally 
 been the recreation of his riper years. Little tilings, falUng imder 
 this class, have occasionally been thrown from his pen, fugitive it is 
 true in their nature, but here and there one that ihe public will recol- 
 lect. Of this stamp is the sketch he gave of the character of Mr. 
 Cannino-, when the shock of his sudden death reached the United 
 States in 1827, soon after he had arrived at the pinnacle of all his 
 hopes, as well as the height of British power for a subject — the Pre- 
 mier-ship. The sketch appeared in the National Intelligencer, almost 
 on the day after the news came, when Mr. Rush Avas at the head of 
 the Treasury, and was the work of a few hours stolen from sleep, as 
 his friends have often heard him say ; but which lus full knowledge 
 of Mr. Canning's character from long intercourse and otherwise, in its 
 English, European, and American bearings, enabled him to throw 
 upon paper so readily. This production on reaching England was 
 republished by the most prominent of their newspapers, in most in- 
 
28 RICHARDRUSH, 
 
 stances with a marked notice of it, and was quoted with applause in 
 the House of Lords. 
 
 In 1833, he published a volume entitled "Memoranda of a Resi- 
 dence at the Court of London." This work purports to record some 
 of the public and personal incidents passing under his experience in 
 England during his first fifteen months of his mission. It was almost 
 universally well received in the United States on first coming out, 
 and nearly as much so in England. To the renown of the latter 
 country in peace and in war, and to her social merits, he did liberal 
 justice ; but on proper occasions, when America was at stake, showed 
 how above all things the institutions and glory of his own country 
 were nearest his heart. In stating the question of impressment, as 
 belonging to his first negotiation, he necessarily portrayed the wrongs 
 of which England was guilty, as also on some other points of inter- 
 national concern between the two countries — though not in an angry 
 spirit, but the contrary. This was more than enough to draw out 
 the wrath of a work which, whenever it may speak with fairness of 
 any American production, would be evidence, prima facie, that it 
 wanted a right American spirit — the London Quarterly Review. 
 With the exception of this work, it met favor from the reviewing world 
 generally in that country, sometimes in a high degree. The Edin- 
 burg Review says of it, that the " spirit of a conventional body would 
 not have improved Mr. Rush's private journal;" characterizes his 
 public negotiations as marked by " intelligence, firmness, and straight- 
 forwardness ;" and has even alluded to them under some points of 
 comparison in connexion with Jefferson's and Franklin's. In de- 
 scribing scenes in private mansions, those of the nobility and many 
 others which his public station opened to him, as Mr. Rush in many 
 instances does, he had in hand a delicate task, but has never on any 
 one occasion violated social confidence, or published an ungentlemanly 
 thing. His book has been out seven years, and the correctness of his 
 narratives and other personal incidents in which the names of persons 
 whom he met in England are introduced, has on no one occasion, that 
 we have ever heard of, been called in question ; while there have 
 been numerous tributes to their truth. The Quarterly Review stands 
 alone in having, in its hasty burst of displeasure, questioned their 
 fidelity — and this not on the authority of any name of the hundreds 
 recounted, but on its own assumptions. His book passed to a second 
 edition in each country. He dedicates the second American eduion 
 to Mr. Madison. A leading idea of Mr. Rush throughout the book— 
 
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 20 
 
 whether a just or erroneous one, must be a matter of opinion — is, that 
 the power of England, far from being on the decline, or stationary, 
 is on the increase, through the increasing extent and solidity of her 
 resources, and he inculcates the wisdom of our statesmen being on 
 their guard against any supposed falling off in her means of annoy- 
 ance to other nations. He contends, that during her wars for the last 
 century, she has contrived, by the preponderance of her naval power, 
 to make the increase of her commerce go hand in hand with her wars, 
 and that her riches have gone on increasing in a greater ratio than 
 her debt. As we have spoken of his attachment to our navy, and as 
 it may be that times are near when again its gallantry will be tried, 
 we quote the following page from his book — the very last in it ; which, 
 whilst it records a disaster, cannot fail to awaken the liveliest asso- 
 ciations of our public glory, as it attests the noblest attributes of our 
 institutions : 
 
 " January 26, 1819.— Mr. ****** called upon me. He talked 
 a crood deal. An idle rumor was flying about the streets of Bonaparte's 
 escape from St. Helena ; the rumor adding that a fast saiUng American 
 schooner was in -the plot. This led him to speak of the achievements 
 of the American navy, upon which he touched with sufficient com- 
 plaisance to us sometimes, but wound up with an allusion to the action 
 between the Chesapeake and Shannon. That, on the whole, he said 
 ought to be considered as the fairest criterion of the naval prowess of 
 the two countries, frigate to frigate. I did not argue the point with 
 him, and he soon left me. 
 
 " The Chesapeake, it is true, was captured. The British captain 
 won his prize gallantly. Let no American gainsay this, for it is for 
 Americans to rob valor of its renown ? We heard how the victory 
 was hailed in England — the more as it seemed to break the spell of a 
 series of naval actions with us that had gone against her. But what- 
 ever joy it created there, I believe, nay, I am sure, it could not have 
 equalled the opposite feeling in the United States. I remember— 
 which of us can forget ? — the first rumor of it. I remember the uni- 
 versal, the indignant incredulity. I remember how the post-ofllces 
 were surrounded for several days by anxious thousands ; how groups 
 of citizens rode out on the high-ways to catch something by anticipa- 
 tion as the mail approached, under the startling reports that kept coming 
 in. And when at last hope left us, when the dread certainty of her 
 capture could no longer be hidden, I remember the public gloom. I 
 remember the solemn processions, the funeral discourses, the tears 
 that testified it. ' Don't give up the Ship .''—the last words of Law- 
 
30 RICHARD RUSH, 
 
 rence, slain by the first broadside — were on every badge and on every 
 ton«nie. His flag for his winding sheet, his body was conveyed by his 
 victors to Halifax, and committed to British earth with honors due to 
 the brave, — but not long did it lie there. A vessel fitted out and rnan- 
 ned by the affectionate patriotism of twelve New England sea captains 
 bore it back in mourning honors to his country, where it reposes under 
 the laurel as the cypress ; for he, yes, he too, had triumphed in his 
 turn, ship to ship, gloriously triumphed over the proud flag of old Eng- 
 land ! Others may augur the naval destinies of the United States 
 from their repeated and splendid victories over the English, in the 
 very infancy of the Republic — I, from the grief, the agony, that fol- 
 lowed this defeat. What was the loss of a single frigate ? Not an 
 atom in the nation's strength ! But the heart-felt pain it created showed 
 the intensity of public feeling among a people where each one, under 
 their noble institutions, indentified himself with the nation, and seemed 
 as sorely struck down by a public misfortune as by a personal blow. 
 What may not be hoped of such a people in peace and in war, if true 
 to themselves and their happy and glorious Union ?" 
 
 We have endeavored to give a brief but honest portraiture of the 
 life, character, and public services of Mr. Rush. From its exhibition 
 much information and instruction can be gained, highly interesting as 
 connected with the history of the country. It holds up to our youth 
 a briffht example — and to rising statesmen it demonstrates, as the 
 surest and most certain road to eminence, that to a pure moral cha- 
 racter, and strict poUtical integrity, and a well stored mind, must be 
 added an unflinching devotion to principles. 
 
 Mr. Rush is of ordinary stature — his' frame is of a firm structure — • 
 his countenance denotes a thoughtful and gifted mind — ^his eye, quick, 
 intelligent, and piercing, seems to anticipate his articulation. In con- 
 versation he is animated and graceful — in manner eminently distin- 
 guished. The reputation he has left behind him in Great Britain con- 
 firms what is well known at home, that while the representative of his 
 country near the first court in Europe, he was faithful to her interests 
 and watchful over her honor — and in his more social relations he is 
 remembered with high esteem and friendship. 
 
 Enjoying now a voluntary seclusion from an active participation in 
 political life, Mr. Rush devotes his time to those pursuits which are 
 deeply connected with the domestic and foreign relations of the coun- 
 -try. At the late election in December last, by the Legislature of Penn- 
 sylvania, of a representative in the United States Senate, Mr. Rush 
 was, by a public letter addressed to him by some of his friends in 
 
OFPENNSYLVANIA. 31 
 
 Bradford County, requested to permit his name to be used as a candi- 
 date. He declined, however, on the ground that custom had sanc- 
 tioned the selection of one Senator from the eastern and one from the 
 western section of the State ; and as the former was already represent- 
 ed he would not wish his friends to oppose the election of a gentle- 
 man from the western part of the Commonwealth. _— -^ 
 In contemplating the history of Mr. Rush's public career, whether 
 at home, in the field of State or national politics, in the Cabinet, as the 
 constitutional adviser of the Executive, or as the representative of his 
 country abroad, we are led to hope, that the time is not far distant 
 when his country will again call him from his retirement amid the 
 leafy solitude of his rural home, that the voice of his experience and 
 wisdom may again be heard in the councils of the nation. 
 
,«Sy "" CONCRess 
 
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