DAVID RITTENHOUSE. 55 



Council of Safety, which had absolute powers. He was the 

 first State Treasurer of Pennsylvania, from 1777 to 1789, when 

 he declined to serve any longer. He was the first Direct- 

 or of the United States Mint, serving for three years from 

 1792; and was called upon on several occasions to serve on 

 commissions for the adjustment of boundaries. In connection 

 with these public employments we find a curious letter from 

 Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Rittenhouse, written in 1778, protesting 

 against his wasting his abilities on affairs of state. " I am 

 satisfied," he says, " that there is an order of geniuses above 

 that obligation [to conduct government], and therefore exempt 

 from it. No one can conceive that Nature ever intended to 

 throw away a Newton upon the occupations of a crown. It 

 would have been a prodigality for which even the conduct of 

 Providence might have been arraigned had he been by birth 

 annexed to what was so far below him. ... I doubt not there 

 are in your country many persons equal to the task of con- 

 ducting government ; but you should consider that the world 

 has but one Rittenhouse, and that it never had one be- 

 fore." 



Mr. Rittenhouse was Professor of Astronomy in the Uni- 

 versity of Pennsylvania from 1779 till 1782, and was a trustee 

 of the institution, continuing in that office after its reorganiza- 

 tion in 1791. He was made one of the secretaries of the Ameri- 

 can Philosophical Society in 1771 ; became its vice-president in 

 1786; and succeeded Benjamin Franklin as president, on his 

 death in 1790. He was elected a Fellow of the American 

 Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1782, and an Honorary Fel- 

 low of the Royal Society in 1795. He received degrees from 

 the College of Philadelphia, William and Mary College, and 

 Princeton College. 



He was tall and slender, quick in gait, had a countenance 

 " indicative of intelligence, complacency, and goodness," and a 

 disposition and manners that secured him friends and kept 

 them. He bore testimony against the slave trade, and sympa- 

 thized with the original motives of the French Revolution to 

 such an extent that he assisted in the organization of the 

 Democratic Society, and was made its president but this was 

 before the excesses of the Revolution were committed. While 

 he might be called self-educated, he was not, as Mr. Barton 

 shows, wholly without assistance in pursuing his studies, al- 



