Robinson.] ■^" [May 7, 



Obituary notice of Michel Chevalier. By Moncure Robinson. 



[Read before the American Philosophical Society, May 7, 1880.) 



I come before the Society for the first time for many years, in discliarge 

 of a duty devolved on me by you, the discliarge of which revives in me' 

 many recollections both pleasant and painful. The eminent political 

 economist and statesman of whom you have requested me to prepare an 

 obituary notice, was not only a member of our Society, but one of my 

 oldest and most attached friends, one whom I have known intimately for 

 nearly half a century, and for whom my affection and admiration steadily 

 increased, from the period of our first acquaintance, to the day of his death. 

 It is not remarkable that it should have been so, for Mr. Chevalier was a 

 man of heart, as well as head, whose whole life was devoted to the service 

 of his country and his fellow men, and one who, whilst undemonstrative 

 and apparently cold on a first acquaintance, was unusually benevolent and 

 kind in his nature, and capable of the warmest attachments for those whom 

 he thought possessors of, and appreciative of, such qualities. 



You will be curious to know something of the early youth of such a man, 

 and it is a gratification to me, to be able to give it to you, in some detail. 



Mr. Chevalier was born at Limoges, chef lieu of the department of the 

 Haute Vienne, the 13th of January, 1806. He was the eldest son of Jean 

 Baptiste Chevalier and of Marie Gurand, both natives of Limoges. They 

 had four other sons, Auguste, Emile, Martial and Gustave. of whom the 

 first three made their names known, both in their native country,, and other 

 lands ; the first as Secretary General of the Presidency, in the days of the 

 second Republic of France, from November, 1849 to 1852 ; the second as 

 a highly educated and accomplished military and civil engineeV, known to 

 many of the citizens of Philadelphia more than fortj'' years ago, when he 

 commenced the practice of his profession as an assistant engineer, on the 

 Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, then under construction, and who has 

 since continued this career both in Europe and America, and been occa- 

 sionally occupied in missions of his government in England, and on the 

 Isthmus of Panama ; the third, Mr. Martial Chevalier of the French Con- 

 sular Department, who was for several years (within the last ten) the 

 Consul General of France, at Quebec, and afterwards at Havana. I had 

 not the advantage of a personal acquaintance with the father of these gen- 

 tlemen, who at the time that his distinguished son, Mr. Michel Chevalier 

 was making the name an honored one throughout the world, was only a small 

 commerc^ant at Limoges, and confined there constantly by his occupations ; 

 but I had the pleasure, during a visit to France in 1837, of seeing often the 

 mother of Mr. Michel Chevalier, and his devoted sister Pauline (afterwards 

 Madame Moroche), and I then learned the secret of his rapid rise in public 

 estimation as a writer and statesman. But I am proceeding too rapidly, 

 and must go back a little, and redeem my promise to tell you something of 

 an earlier period. 



The boy Michel Chevalier entered as a boarding pupil the College of 



