4 



Annual Address. 



Boeiety. At their head stood Robert R. Livingston, a man, 

 who for high and varied ability and eminent public ser- 

 vice, had no superior in that day of great men. Descended 

 from an ancestry distinguished in two lands for their love 

 of liberty, their patriotism and their talents ; himself the 

 representative of one of the leading manorial families of 

 the state — with intellectual endowments of the highest 

 order, and with every advantage for their culture and exer- 

 cise — the inheritor of ample estates and of everything 

 that would make private life elegant and attractive, he 

 gave himself unreservedly, from the outset to the close of 

 his life of nearly three-score years and ten, in earnest and 

 successful labors, in high public station, or in the not less 

 valuable occupations of his leisure, to promote the welfare 

 of his country and of mankind. Early in life he was 

 recorder of New York ; soon afterwards, and at the age of 

 only thirty years, a leading member of the' first congress, 

 and one of the committee appointed to draft the declara- 

 tion of independence, and an eloquent advocate of that 

 measure; then appointed by congress as secretary of state 

 for foreign affairs ; then one of the most active and influ- 

 ential members of the convention that formed the first 

 constitution of this state ; then an earnest co-worker with 

 Hamilton and Jay to secure the acceptance by this state 

 of the constitution of the United States ; then as chancel- 

 lor of this state for seventeen years, and until his appoint- 

 ment as minister to France; then as minister to that 

 government during the consulate, with which he negotiated 

 the purchase of Louisiana and thus extended our domain 

 to the shores of the Pacific. In all these, one would think 

 there was enough to have filled up the measure of the 

 work and the usefulness of one man ; but the recreation 

 and by-play of a great mind are oftentimes of more worth 

 than the life-toil of ordinary men. Through all this course 

 of engrossing public duty, he never relinquished his philo- 



