16S Biographical Account of [March, 



The profits were so small as not to enable him to keep a clerk, and 

 the finances of the country so embarrassed as to render the office 

 far from agreeable. In 1777 the British army occupied Phila- 

 delphia, The State Legislature went to Lancaster, and Mr. 

 Rittenhousc accompanied them, leaving his wife and family (for he 

 had married again) at Norriton. A Council of Safety, consisting 

 of twelve persons, of whom Mr. Rittenhouse vvas one, was 

 appointed with despotic powers ; but it does not appear that they 

 ever exercised them. VVhen the British army evacuated Philadel- 

 phia, in 177^j Mr. Rittenhouse returned to that city, and continued 

 to reside in it during the rest of his life. 



In 177'^ he was appointed one of the commissioners to settle the 

 boundary between Pennsylvania and Virginia, which had been dis- 

 puted for so long a period with so much eagerness. The business 

 was finally settled in 17^4, Mr. Rittenhouse and his associates 

 having marked out the whole boundary line with the greatest 

 accuracy. On the 10th of March, 1780, Mr, Rittenhouse was 

 elected, by the General Assembly of Philadelphia, a Trustee of the 

 Loan Office of the State. In 1782 he was chosen a Fellow of the 

 Academy of Arts and Sciences of Boston. In 17SG he was 

 appointed a commissioner to determine the exact boundary be- 

 tween the State of Massachusetts and New York. In 17^9 the 

 degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by the College 

 of New Jersey. The same year he resigned the office of Treasurer 

 of the State, which he had held for 13 years, having been 

 unanimously elected to it every year by the vote of the Assembly. 

 In 17^0 he was elected Vice President of the American Philoso- 

 phical Society ; and the next year, in consequence of the death of 

 Dr. Franklin, he was chosen President of that learned Body, a 

 situation which he held till his death. 



He was employed by Government, on various occasions, in the 

 construction of roads, and in rendering rivers navigable, or in 

 improving their navigation ; and in 1792 he received the very 

 important appointment of Director of the American Mint, a 

 situation which he held till 1795, when he resigned it. 



The French Revolution had been going on for some years, and 

 it is not surprising that it was generally approved of by the inhabit- 

 ants of America : so strong were their prejudices, indeed, that even 

 the destruction of the King of France, and of the whole family, 

 the bloody despotism of Robespierre, and the fanatical madness of 

 the pretended philosophers who abolished by law the Cliristian 

 religion, the belief in tiie existence of God, and of a future state, 

 did not open their eyes, nor make them sensible of the desperate 

 evils to Europe, morality, and civilization, with wliich that ill- 

 starred revolution was pregnant. A democratic society was esta- 

 blished at Philadelphia in 1793 in imhation of the Jacobin Club of 

 Paris, and Mr. Rittenhouse was elected the President. The bad 

 tendency of this society was soon evident ; and it became the source 

 uf many political evils, particularly of an insurrection in the west 



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