POLITICAL PORTRAITS, WITH PEN AND PENCIL.

NO. XVIII.

RICHARD RUSH.

AMONG those who in after times will hold a distinguished place in the list of American Statesmen, when their lives and characters, both public and private, shall be viewed through the impartiality of historic light, most assuredly will be found the subject of the following sketch. If talents of the highest order—an education the most liberal-laborious study-a judgment matured by profound thought—if a long life of devotion to his country in connexion with some of her most important civic services-if political wisdom drawn from the best and purest sources, and a political integrity never questioned-if the most marked evidence by his fellow-countrymen of their just appreciation of his merits-if such grounds can create an undeniable title to a national name, it will be awarded to Mr. Rush.

RICHARD RUSH is the second son of the celebrated Dr. Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania. To have been brought up by his father, is to be well educated; for his communicative temper and habits made him a preceptor, continually imparting to those around him the patriotism, philanthrophy, morals, learning, manners, industry, and emulation, of which he was an example as well as teacher, who left the world replenished with his principles and pupils. Richard Rush was born in Philadelphia, in August, 1780, and is now therefore fifty-nine years old, enjoying a degree of bodily as well as mental activity and health unusual at that period. After having been at the usual preparatory schools, he was entered in the college at Princeton, at the age of fourteen, at which institution his father, and his maternal grandfather, Richard Stockton of New Jersey, had both been educated, both of whom were Signers of the Declaration of Independence.

At college, though but little addicted to hard study, he was fond of debate and public speaking, for which intellectual exercises he early exhibited the germs of future excellence. He took his degree in the autumn of 1798, being the youngest in a class of thirty-three. Immediately upon his graduation, he commenced the study of the law in the office of William Lewis, Esq., then one of the leaders of the Philadelphia Bar.

The year following the whole country was in a state of martial excitement, under the wrongs and insults of France. The youth of the country poured in their addresses to the President, Mr. Adams, with

a tender of their services in case of war; and young Rush, then seventeen years of age, did not hold back from the general feeling, though he was not of" MacPherson's Blues." This fervor of the country did not last long, neither invasion nor war having followed, except partial hostilities with France upon the ocean, where, as usual, our flag was triumphant. Towards the latter part of his time with Mr. Lewis, he gave himself up to close study, and was admitted to the bar in December, 1800, when but little over twenty. His habits were at this period formed to laborious self-discipline and culture. During the six or seven years that followed, being still a member of his father's family, and having little practice in his profession, he did not cease his devotion to study, making the night "joint laborer with the day,” and, although of a robust and strong constitution, endangering his health by the intensity of his application. The law, history, ancient and modern literature, government, the orators, the poets-these were the fields into which he went, reading the best authors. He formed at this time that intellectual habit so effective in the acquisition and retention of knowledge, and so beneficial to the mind itself, of digesting by reflection all that he read. Every volume received the full power of his attention; important facts or thoughts were recalled, and entered in his own language in common-place books, and a short criticism and opinion passed upon many of them when finished. Nor, among the other studies which engrossed at this period the industrious energies of his mind, was that of politics forgotten, although he took no active part in them at this period of his life. If his personal and professional associates were the Federalists of Philadelphia, he had deeply imbibed from his father, in early life, the republican principles of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison. The former, in the beautiful letter, published among his works, that he wrote on religion to Dr. Rush in 1803, begins by saying: " In some of my delightful conversations with you in the evenings of 1798-'99 (the black cockade days), and which served as an antidote to the afflictions of the crisis through which our country was then laboring, the Christain religion was our topic." It was from such fountains the son took in political principles which throughout a life now not short have emphatically governed him.

The first political meeting which he ever attended was one held in the State House Yard in Philadelphia, in 1807, on the occasion of the attack by the British on our frigate Chesapeake. He had up to this time been known only as an ambitious and extremely studious young member of the bar. He made an animated and vigorous speech on the subject of the wrongs we had received from England generally, and on this last outrage in particular, which was received with the warmest applause, and introduced him most favorably to the Republican party. Hitherto known but little as a public speaker, he was now looked upon as destined to eminence in this field. The year following brought him for the first time into professional notice. In

1808, in a speech that occupied the principal part of the day, he defended the Editor of the Aurora, Colonel Duane, who was prosecuted by the Commonwealth for a libel upon Governor McKean. This speech endeared him very much to his democratic fellow-citizens. There was a soundness in its political doctrines, and an eloquent fearlessness in its whole character, that seemed to entrench him at once in their warm affections. As an incident illustrative of the effect produced upon the friends of Colonel Duane by Mr. Rush's powerful ap peal for his client, it may be stated, that one of the oldest democrats, who heard it, embraced him when he concluded, and took him up in his arms, while loud plaudits were heard throughout the court room. After this speech business at the bar poured in upon him rapidly. In this connexion he has often spoken, and always in terms of grateful acknowledgment, of the early professional friendship he received from the present Judge Hopkinson of Philadelphia, in all ways in which it could be cordially afforded to a young tyro at the bar.

At the succeeding Congressional election, that patriarch of the democratic party in those days, and friend of Mr. Jefferson, Thomas Leiper,* together with Col. Duane and Dr. Lieb called on Mr. Rush and asked him to allow his name to be placed among the candidates for Congress; but he declined, being at that epoch intent upon his profession. But he continued to receive ever afterwards manifestations of marked attachment and confidence from these and other champions of the democratic cause. Colonel Duane was unbounded in his thankfulness for his defence of him, and sent him a large fee-which was declined, Mr. Rush considering him as a persecuted man. Public bodies in Philadelphia, composed of democrats, now spontaneously made him their counsel and solicitor, as the Board of Health, the Guardians of the Poor, and other democratic functionaries, of the Northern Liberties.

In January, 1811, Governor Snyder appointed him Attorney General of Pennsylvania. His practice was now increasing daily. In the spring of this year a misunderstanding between Mr. Brown and himself (Peter A. Brown, Esq., of the Philadelphia Bar) led to a duel. Neither party received any injury, and it is to the credit of both, that the event did not interrupt the courtesy of their subsequent intercourse. As Attorney General, he was necessarily brought into much intercourse and correspondence with Governor Snyder and his associates in the State administration, then consisting of the powerful democrats of the State of that era, viz.: Mr Findlay, afterwards Governor of the State, now Treasurer of the Mint; General Porter, father of the present Governor; Mr. Boileau, Mr. Bryant, and Mr. Cochrane-the esteem and confidence of all whom, as well as of the members of the

* Mr. Jefferson was heard to say, that the tables of Dr. Rush, Major Butler, of South Carolina, and Mr. Leiper, were the only ones in Philadelphia to which he was ever invited during those days of Federal persecution; and that the Federalists used to cross the streets to avoid him.

Legislature whom he used to see in his visits on business to the seat of the State government, he gained in a high degree.

At this point of time, and a little earlier, national politics had grown to be of intense interest. The state of our relations with both England and France, the multiplied wrongs we had received from both, and the peculiar aggravation and malignity of those from England, as they included impressment and the killing of our citizens with her cannon off our shores, rendered a war with one or the other country almost inevitable. Home questions of a highly exciting nature also existed, and were of daily discussion in the press; among others, that of renewing the charter of the old Bank of the United States. The files of the Aurora, of which Col. Duane was still Editor, contain Mr. Rush's contributions on this subject against the renewal of the charter, on Mr. Madison's original ground of its unconstitutionality. His father, though never in active politics, nor at all a party man, after the Revolutionary struggle ended, was nevertheless always opposed in his opinions to the banking and paper systems, and corresponded with Mr. Madison on the funding system; in the strong condemnation of which he joined. The son had been deeply indoctrinated in the same opinions. Hence his opposition to the recharter of the late Bank of the United States is in unison with his early convictions; as has been the case with thousands, owing to the usurpations of the late bank; for these usurpations all honorable and correct merchants, like the Presidents of the first Bank of the United States, old Thomas Willing of Philadelphia, and David Lenox, though of the Federal party, would have joined in condemning, as having sprung from a reckless school of foul and unwarrantable speculation, not from any of their maxims of banking. Thomas Willing would have gone to the rack before he would have issued as currency the notes of a defunct bank, have brought down upon himself a penal statute from Congress.

In November, 1811, on the appointment of the late Judge Duval to the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, Mr. Madison, then President, immediately nominated Mr. Rush to the office of Comptroller of the Treasury, which Judge Duval had vacated. This appointment was entirely unexpected by him, as it had been unsought; but it seems to have been peculiarly acceptable to the democratic party of his State, whose favor and confidence he universally enjoyed, to an extent never surpassed perhaps by any one at his age. He declined accepting this appointment at first, but wrote to the Secretary of State, on receiving the commission, asking time to deliberate. He did not accept it until he had ascertained from that source, that its duties would raise no official impediment to the occasional exercise of his profession in the Supreme Court at Washington, should he incline to do so. The ensuing January he removed with his family, having married a southern lady, to Washington.