PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 27 



cles of New York, complete the list of the Philadelphia savans 

 of the last century. 



There is not in all American literature a passage which illus 

 trates the peculiar tendencies in the thought of this period so 

 thoroughly as Jefferson's defense of the country against the 

 charges of Buffon and Raynal, which he published in 1783, 

 which is particularly entertaining because of its almost pettish 

 depreciation of our motherland. 



"On doit etre etonne " (says Raynal) " que PAmerique n'ait 

 pas encore produit un bon poete, un habile mathematicien, un 

 homme de genie dans un seul art ou un seule science." 



" When we shall have existed a people as long as the Greeks did 

 before they produced a Homer, the Romans a Virgil, the French 

 a Racine and Voltaire, the English a Shakespeare and Milton, 

 should this reproach still be true, we will inquire from what 

 unfriendly causes it has proceeded that the other countries of 

 Europe and quarters of the earth shall not have inscribed any 

 name on the role of poets. 



" In war we have produced a Washington whose name will in 

 future ages assume its just station among the celebrated worthies 

 of the world, when that wretched philosophy shall be forgotten 

 which would have arranged him among the degeneracies of na 

 ture. 



" In physics we have produced a Franklin, than whom no one 

 of the present age has made more important discoveries, nor has 

 enriched philosophy with more, or more ingenious, solutions of 

 the phenomena of nature. 



" We have supposed Mr. Rittenhouse second to no astronomer 

 living ; that in genius he must be the first because he is self- 

 taught. He has not indeed made a world ; but he has by imita 

 tion approached nearer its Maker than any man who has lived 

 from the creation to this day. There are various ways of keeping 

 the truth out of sight. Mr. Rittenhouse's model of the planetary 

 system has the plagiary appellation of an orrery ; and the quadrant 

 invented by Godfrey, an American also, and with the aid of which 

 the European nations traverse the globe, is called Hadley's quad 

 rant. 



" We calculate thus : The United States contain three millions 

 of inhabitants ; France twenty millions ; and the British Islands 

 ten. We produce a Washington, a Franklin, a Rittenhouse. 

 France then should have half a dozen in each of these lines, and 

 Great Britain half that number, equally eminent. It may be true 



