MEMOIR OF DE WITT CLINTON.

GENTLEMEN, MEMBERS OF THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY,

AND FELLOW-CITIZENS.

THE feelings which arise in the bosom of him who now addresses you, will readily be anticipated, and cannot fail to find a response in the hearts of all who are assembled upon this solemn occasion.

Ere this, you expected to have heard the well known voice of your CLINTON, pronouncing an eulogy upon the merits, the talents, and the virtues of the orator and patriot, the lamented EMMET: But, alas! such are the dispensations of Providence, such is the precarious tenure of our existence, that voice too, is hushed in death, and the remains of those two illustrious men, whose lives have been spent at the shrine of patriotism, whose worth would have done honour to any age or nation, in ancient or in modern times, are now enclosed in the tomb.-But their memory still lives; and, when their deeds shall be recorded by some future Plutarch, they will afford to their youthful successors, illustrious examples by which they also may acquire the regard and gratitude of their country, and be rendered worthy of the veneration of posterity.

Although I am deeply sensible of the magnitude of the task which has been assigned me, and almost discouraged from the attempt

to perform it, yet when I consider the invitation with which I have been honoured by my fellow-citizens, the relation in which I stand to the Institution of which Mr. Clinton was the presiding officer, and the uninterrupted friendship with which, during a period of more than forty years, "e'en from our boyish days," I have been regarded by the late distinguished man whose loss we now deplore, I do not feel myself at liberty to decline the effort to comply with your wishes, upon the present occasion, however imperfect may be the execution of the task I have ventured to assume.

But I come not here to burn the incense of adulation, or to load his memory with indiscriminate praise, or unmerited panegyric: his native powers of mind, his education, his extensive and varied acquirements, his writings, his public works, his private virtues, his patriotism, his unsullied integrity, his moral feelings, his religious faith, his devotion to the interests of the state, to science, to literature, and those benevolent institutions calculated to promote the happiness of man, will constitute his best eulogy. To exhibit these to your view, will be my present endeavour, and the highest object and gratification of my ambition. These faithfully exhibited, cannot fail to compose a portrait, alike honourable to the age which he adorned, and a model of imitation worthy of succeeding generations.

Introductory to these important themes, permit me to ask your attention, for a few moments, to a brief account of the ancestors of Mr. Clinton; for, in them we shall find the prototype of the great intellectual features and moral character, as well as the personal dignity and deportment, the favourite pursuits and the patriotic feelings that characterized him whose outline it will now become my endeavour to delineate.

Mr. Clinton's earliest ancestors were of English origin. William

Clinton, from whom his descent is traced, was an adherent of the royal cause in the civil wars of England, and an officer in the army of Charles the first.

After the dethronement of that monarch, Mr. Clinton took refuge on the continent, where he remained a long time in exile. Having spent some in France and Spain, he secretly proceeded to Scotland, where he married a lady of the family of Kennedy. With a view to safety, he then passed over to the north of Ireland, where he died, deprived of his patrimony, leaving James, an orphan son, then two years old.

When James arrived at manhood, he went to England, for the purpose of recovering his patrimonial estate; but, being barred by the limitation of an act of Parliament, he returned to Ireland, and finally settled in the county of Longford; having, during his visit to the country of his ancestors, married Miss Elizabeth Smith, the daughter of a Captain in Cromwell's army. By this connexion he was enabled to maintain, at that time, a respectable standing in the country of his adoption.

Charles Clinton, the son of James, and the grandfather of De Witt Clinton, was born in the county of Longford, in Ireland, in 1690. In 1729 he resolved to emigrate to this country, with the intention to settle in Pennsylvania.

In the latter end of May of that year, accompanied by many of his friends who adhered to his fortunes, he embarked with his family, consisting of his wife, two daughters, and one son; but owing to a peculiar and disastrous train of circumstances on the voyage, during which they lost one son and one daughter, they did not arrive until the month of October, when they were landed at Cape Cod. In the vicinity of that place they resided until the spring of 1731, when Mr. Clinton removed with his family, and the

friends who had embarked their fortunes with his, to a part of Ulster, now Orange county, in the state of New-York, where they formed a permanent and flourishing settlement.

The part of the country which he selected, was then wild and uncultivated, covered with forests, but well watered, diversified with hills and vales, and abundant in the products of cultivation. Although only eight miles from the Hudson river, and sixty from the city of New-York, these hardy pioneers were at that period so exposed to the incursions of the Indians, then inhabiting the vicinity of their residence, that it was found necessary to erect a palisade work around his house, for the security of himself and his neighbours. In this retreat Mr. Clinton spent his time in the improvement of his farm, in the cultivation of literature, in the enjoyment of his library, the education of his children,* and occasionally acting as a surveyor of land, for which he was well qualified by his education, and particularly his mathematical knowledge, in which he eminently excelled. Possessed of a well selected library, and endowed with extraordinary talents, he made continual accessions to his store of useful knowledge.

The character he uniformly sustained, was that of pure morals, a strong and cultivated understanding, great respectability, and dignity of deportment, and extensive influence.

Having been well educated, he soon attained to notice and distinction. His first appointment was that of a Justice of the peace; he was afterwards promoted to the station of a Judge of the Common Pleas for the county of Ulster. In 1756 he was

* Colonel Clinton in educating his children, also availed himself of the services of Daniel Thain, a gentleman who had been educated at the college of Aberdeen, and who afterwards became a highly respected minister of the gospel.

⚫appointed, by the Governor, Sir Charles Hardy, a Lt. Colonel of the militia of the province, and commanded a regiment at the capture of Fort Frontenac, now Kingston, by Colonel Bradstreet.*

He died at his own residence, on the 19th November, 1773, in the eighty-third year of his age; and it may be added, just in time to escape, at that advanced age, the cares and perplexities of the revolution then about to commence, but in the full view of its approach. He expired breathing an ardent spirit of patriotism, and in his last moments, conjuring his sons to stand by the liberties of America.

Besides the daughter born in Ireland, he had four sons in this country. Alexander, educated in the college of Princeton, and afterwards a physician. Charles, also an eminent physician, and a surgeon in the British Army, at the capture of the Havana. James, the father of De Witt Clinton, and George, the youngest, the late Vice President of the United States.

James Clinton was born on the 13th of August, 1736, at the family residence, in what is now Orange County, in the then colony of New-York. Possessing strong natural powers of mind, he acquired, under the instruction of his father, an excellent

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George Clinton, the father of the late Sir Henry Clinton, was then Governor of the colony. With this gentleman, Colonel Clinton formed an acquaintance, which might, perhaps, have been produced by ties of distant consanguinity, but which ripened into an intimacy, that only a congeniality of character could have effected. The son of Colonel Clinton, the late venerable Vice President of the United States, was named after the colonial Governor. Several splendid offers, made to him by Governor Clinton, were declined by the colonel, who preferred a life of respectable independence, in the bosom of his family, and in the cultivation of letters, surrounded by his colony of friends and countrymen, to all the allurements of office, and all the pageantry of rank."-See Life of De Witt Clinton in Delaplaine's Repository, Vol. I. p 190.