1789] REV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 307 



This being privately thrown on the table of the Speaker, who 

 was a man of humor, it was soon handed to some of the nearest 

 members, and spread through the House with a laugh which did 

 more to smother the poor Rider in cunabulis than many long 

 speeches could have done. 



On the 2d of June the Sixth Annual Convention of the Episco- 

 pal Church of Maryland was held in Baltimore, Dr. Smith was 

 elected President. 



Before it finally adjourned he made known to it that he was 

 about to retire from the State and return to Peimsylvania. The 

 Convention was deeply affected by the intelligence, and directed 

 its Secretary to assure him that " their minds were strongly im- 

 pressed with a grateful sense of the services he had rendered to 

 learning and religion by his attention to those important concerns 

 and to return to him their sincere thanks." 



We need not specify the great services which Dr. Smith did to 

 both the Church and to literature in Maryland during his resi- 

 dence there. Bishop White, after speaking of the perils to which 

 the Church in that State had been exposed by the Legislature, 

 which, though consisting of men of various denominations, " took 

 up," he says, " the subject of organizing the Church, and particu- 

 larly of appointing ordainers to the ministry," — and of the two 

 Church Conventions of August, 1783, and June, 1784, by which 

 they were counteracted, says :* 



The proceedings of these conventions, with measures taken at other 

 times and in other matters by the clergy of that State, were chiefly ori- 

 ginated by the Rev. Dr. Smith, who in his residence there, during the 

 seizure of the charter-rights of the College of Philadelphia, exerted his 

 excellent talents in these and in other public works. 



In every state of life to which God was pleased to call him, he 

 learned not only to be content, but at once was highly useful. 



We may say, indeed, with some confidence, that but for the ac- 

 tivity and executive powers of Dr. Smith, it would have been im- 

 possible to have got the Church in the Southern States into a right 

 condition for the great work of union, which through his. Bishop 

 White's and Bishop Seabury's united efforts — and in the face of 



* White's Memoirs, p. 92. Second Edition. 



