Sharswood.] 264 [October. 



merchantman to the peaceable pursuit of his traffic, and if such a 

 system could be secured without our being drawn into hostilities, it 

 certainly were a consummation devoutly to be wished." 



In 1809, appeared anonymously from his pen, Inchiquin, or The 

 Jesuit's Letters ; purporting to be the correspondence of a young 

 Irishman educated at St. Omer's, banished on account of complicity 

 in the rebellion of 1793, and temporarily sojourning in the United 

 States. With some lively hits at the manners, amusements and style 

 of living, as well as the plan of the Federal capital, then even more 

 truly than now described as the City of Magnificent Distances, were 

 joined interesting, impartial and life-like sketches of Washington, 

 the elder Adams and JeiFerson, the three first Presidents. The 

 main design of the publication, pursued with a bold and manly in- 

 dependence of thought and criticism, then new in American writers, 

 was the vindication of the character, politics, literature, and science of 

 this country against the slanders of the English tourists and scribblers. 



Inchiquin was severely handled in the Quarterly Review for 

 January, 1814, and this produced a reply published anonymously by 

 J. K. Paulding, New York, 1815. 



In the early part of 1812, Mr. Ingersoll came forward at a town 

 meeting in Philadelphia, with resolutions, supported by a strong and 

 eifective speech, in favor of war with Great Britain, which was de- 

 clared in the following June. In October, of the same year, he was 

 elected a member of the Thirteenth Congress, whose term commenced 

 March 4th, 1813. An extra session was called for May 24th, 1813, 

 and that Congress sat almost continuously from that time until March 

 3d, 1815. It was an illustrious body. Without referring to the Sen- 

 ate at all, nor pi-etending to call over the full roll of great men who 

 stood on the floor of the House of Representatives with Mr. Inger- 

 soll, there were John Randolph, Henry Clay, William Lowndes, John 

 C. Calhoun, Nathaniel Macon, and John W. Eppes. Mr. Ingersoll's 

 first efibrt was in Committee of the Whole, June 29th, 1813, on a 

 resolution submitted by him to impose a tax on incomes and inheri- 

 tances. His great speech in defence of the policy of the war, into 

 which he seemed to throw all his powers of logic, sarcasm and rhetoric, 

 was delivered in Committee of the Whole, on the Loan Bill, February 

 14th and 15th, lbl4. Nothing in the annals of parliamentary 

 eloquence exceeds the weight of the torrent with which he bore 

 down upon the employment by the British of Indian savages as 

 auxiliaries. " So long ago as 1792 was this iniquity in preparation. 

 Within the last two years, every disguise has been thrown oflf and 



