582 BALCH— SOME FORMER MEMBERS. [April i8. 



nations of that day in Europe, exercised a powerful influence towards 

 shaping the law of neutrality as it is to-day. Jefferson took ad- 

 vanced ground, both with France and Great Britain, on many of the 

 questions that arose at that time. And the principles for which he 

 then contended, several of them then hardly thought of, much less 

 universally recognized, by nations, have in the course of a century 

 become gradually imbedded into the acknowledged law of nations.'' 



Grover Cleveland, too, who stood as immovable as Gibraltar be- 

 tween a nation crazed by a generation of vicious financial legislation 

 and the disasters and burdens of a debased currency into which it 

 wished to plunge with the blind hope of curing the ills from which 

 it suffered, made a third of our members whose fame as a great 

 president of the United States has reached to the uttermost parts of 

 the earth. Many other notable political men who have helped to 

 shape the history of our country were members, such men as John 

 Dickinson, Albert Gallatin, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, 

 Thomas Willing, Robert Morris, Charles Thompson, Francis Light- 

 foot Lee, DeWitt Clinton, John Ouincy Adams, Alexander James 

 Dallas, George Mifflin Dallas, Manasseh Cutler, Charles Jared In- 

 gersoll, Nicholas Biddle, Robert C. Winthrop, Thomas Francis 

 Bayard and Carl Schurz. And of foreigners who led active and 

 important political lives many have been members : such men as the 

 Count de Vergennes, the Marquis de la Fayette, George Douglas 

 Campbell, Eighth Duke of Argyle, and William Ewart Gladstone, 

 the latter two of whom both made their mark in the world of letters. 



We have had among our membership a few representatives of 

 the Fine Arts. And in this group it is gratifying to the local pride 



^ The society is fortunate in possessing an original imprint of the Declara- 

 tion of Independence as well as a draft copy of the declaration in Jefferson's 

 own hand, and many manuscripts -of Indian vocabularies, most of them 

 collected by Jefferson. 



Dr. Holland possesses the diploma that the Royal Physical Society of 

 Edinburgh — which was instituted in 1771 and confirmed by royal authority in 

 1788 — awarded at Edinburgh on April 12, 1799, to Thomas Jefferson when 

 that society elected him an Honorary Fellow. In the diploma Jefferson is 

 addressed as President of the United States, though he was really Vice- 

 President. At that time the Vice-President was the man who received the 

 second highest vote, and it was the custom abroad to address the Vice- 

 President as President. 



