MEMBER OF THE AMERI AN FHILOSOPHICAL AND OF THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETIES

AND AUTHOR OF THE OLIVE BRANCH VINDICLE HIBERNICE ESSAYS ON BANKING.

T

ON POLITICAL ECONOMY AND ON INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT.

BORN IN DUBLIN IN THE YEAR 1760: SETTLED IN AMERICA 18 1783 4.

"Your Brothers Book has done more to vin.licate Ireland than all that ever

was written or published on the subject Declaration of the R Rev De Troy R Art!. Bet Dublin Novi

and then burst into laughter. "See if Mr. Russel's carriage is at the door," said he to the servant, and he hastened to put on his cloak. "Francis!" cried he as he entered the coach. "Yes, Sir," quoth Francis. "Drive like the devil, Francis."

"And such is the world," thought Russel when the door was closed; "all seems fair and true until the bitter fruit of knowledge undeceives us-and then we find, alas! that our eyes have been dazzled by a 'whited sepulchre.'"

B.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MATHEW CAREY..

LETTER II.

WHEN I determined on emigration, I hesitated between New-York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and was finally led to prefer Philadelphia, because I had lately received a parcel of papers from this city; among others the Pennsylvanian Packet of June 10, 1784, and Bradford's Weekly Advertiser, of about the same date, which contained an account of the proceedings of the House of Commons against me. In Philadelphia, therefore, my case was known; and of course the oppression I had undergone, I was led to conclude, would probably make me friends there.

In sailing up the river Delaware, the America, which was under the care of a drunken pilot, ran aground on the Brandywine shoals, and was in imminent danger-but, after a long struggle, was finally got off, by the aid of a number of hardy passengers, and half a dozen sailors belonging to a vessel bound for Jamaica, which had been wrecked at sea. They were taken off the wreck by a Philadelphia vessel, bound for London, which we met, and which removed them to the America.

As this vessel was a clipper, very sharp built, and aground at high water, there was a great alarm among the passengers, who were bewailing their hard fate, to be in such imminent danger, after a safe passage of three thousand miles. Men six feet high displayed the utmost consternation, and actually shed tears. Trunks and boxes were opened to secure money, and trinkets, and other valuable articles which were in a small compass, and could be carried about the person. The alarm was greatly increased by the frantic conduct of the pilot, who lost his self-possession, and ran about distracted.

Behold me now landed in Philadelphia, with about a dozen guineas in my pocket, without relation, or friend, and even without an acquaintance, except my compagnons de voyage, of whom very few were eligible

associates.

While I was contemplating a removal into the country, where I could have boarded at about a dollar, or a dollar and a quarter a week, intending to wait the arrival of my funds, a most extraordinary and unlooked-for circumstance occurred, which changed my purpose, gave a new direction to my views, and, in some degree, colored the course of my future life. It reflects great credit on the Marquess de La Fayette, who was then at Mount Vernon, to take leave of General Washington. A young gentleman of the name of Wallace, a fellow-passen

ger of mine, had brought letters of recommendation to the General; and having gone to his seat to deliver them, fell into the Marquess's company, and in the course of conversation, the affairs of Ireland came on the tapis. The Marquess, who had, in the Philadelphia papers, seen an account of my adventures with the Parliament, and the persecution I had undergone, inquired of Wallace, what had become. of the poor persecuted Dublin printer? He replied, "He came passenger with me, and is now in Philadelphia," stating the boardinghouse where I had pitched my tent. On the arrival of the Marquess in this city, he sent me a billet, requesting to see me at his lodgings, whither I went. He received me with great kindness; condoled with me on the persecution I had undergone; inquired into my prospects;— and having told him that I proposed, on the receipt of my funds, to set up a newspaper, he approved the idea, and promised to recommend me to his friends, Robert Morris, Thomas Fitzsimons, &c. &c. After half an hour's conversation, we parted. Next morning, while I was at breakfast, a letter from him was handed me, which, to my very great surprise, contained four one hundred dollar notes of the Bank of North-America. This was the more extraordinary and liberal, as not a word had passed between us on the subject of giving or receiving, borrowing or lending money; and a remarkable feature in the affair was, that the letter did not contain a word of reference to the enclosure.

In the course of the day I went to his lodgings, and found that he had, an hour or two previously, departed for Princeton, where Congress then sat, having been in some measure driven from Philadelphia, by a mutiny among the soldiers, who were clamorous for their pay, and had kept them in a state of siege for three hours in the StateHouse. I wrote to him to New-York, whither, I understood, he had gone from Princeton, expressive of my gratitude in the strongest terms, and received a very kind and friendly answer.

I cannot pass over this noble trait in the character of the illustrious Marquess without urging it strongly on the overgrown wealthy of our country, as an example worthy of imitation. Here was a foreign

nobleman, who had devoted years of the prime of his life, and greatly impaired his fortune, in the service of a country, separated by thousands of miles distance from his native land. After these mighty sacrifices, he meets, by an extraordinary accident, with a poor persecuted young man, destitute of friends and protectors his heart expands towards him-he freely gives him means of making a living without the most remote expectation of return, or of ever again seeing the object of his bounty. He withdraws from the city to avoid the expression of the gratitude of the beneficiary. I have more than once assumed, and I now repeat, that I doubt whether in the whole life of this (I had almost said) unparalleled man, there is to be found anything, which, all the circumstances of the case considered, more highly elevates his character.*

*It is due to myself to state, that though this was in every sense of the word a gift, I regarded it as a loan, payable to the Marquess's countrymen, according to the exalted sentiment of Dr. Franklin, who, when he presented a bill for ten pounds to the Rev. Mr. Nixon, an Irish Clergyman, (who was in distress in Paris, and wanted to migrate to America,) told him to pay the sum to any Americans whom he might find in distress, and thus "let good offices go round." I fully paid the debt to Frenchmen in distress-consigned one or two hogsheads of tobacco to the Mar

I immediately issued proposals for printing the Pennsylvania Herald, which was extremely imprudent, as I was so utterly unacquainted with the temper and manners of the people. In a word, I was as destitute of some of the most important qualifications requisite to carry on a paper in Philadelphia, as I had been in Dublin, when I there commenced the Volunteer's Journal. I ought at once to have gone to work as a journeyman printer, and deferred entering into business on my own account for a year or two, until I had become acquainted with the country and those among whom my lot was cast. But foolish pride prevented me from taking this rational course, which I have often since had occasion to regret.

I soon supplied myself with types, but had no press. A Scotch bookseller and printer, of the name of Bell, had recently died in Philadelphia, and his stock, in which there was a press, was to be sold at auction about this time. As the press was very old, and very much impaired in usefulness, I expected to have it a bargain. But Colonel Oswald, who printed the Independent Gazetteer, and who viewed my operations with a jealous eye, commenced that hostility, which, ultimately, as will appear in the sequel, nearly cost me my life. He bid against me; and as I had absurdly fixed on a day for publication which was so near that I had not time to procure a new press, he continued bidding till he raised the price to about fifty pounds currency, or, one hundred and thirty-three dollars, being one third of my whole fortune, and about the price of a new press.

My expectations of a remittance of the sum due me by my brother, were almost entirely disappointed. Of the amount I received but fifty pounds. The Volunteer's Journal finally perished, partly by the persecution of my brother, but chiefly by means of a paper set up under the auspices of government, with a similar title, which drew off a portion of the sale of the original paper, and most of the advertising

custom.

At length I issued the first number of the Pennsylvania Herald on the 25th of January, 1785, which "dragged its slow length along" with slender hopes of success. On the 25th of March, same year, I took Mr. William Spotswood and C. Talbot into partnership, when the paper was enlarged; but still it did not make much progress, until I commenced the publication of a regular series of the debates of the House of Assembly, which was here quite a novelty. To this undertaking I was led by the following circumstance. A town-meeting had been called at the State-House, to take into consideration the calamitous state of the trade of the country, at which I attended, in the midst of a large concourse of citizens, in order to give the public a statement of the proceedings. Jared Ingersoll, Esq. addressed the meeting with great effect. I sat down on my return home to write merely the heads of his speech-but found it run so smoothly, that I gave it in a regular series in the third person. When I handed it to Mr. Ingersoll for the purpose of examination and correction, he made only a few slight verbal alterations, and declared that he could scarcely have done it so well himself, as he had spoken without notes.

quess, (I believe it was two, but am uncertain,) and, moreover, when, in 1824, he reached this country, with shattered fortunes, sent him to New-York, a check for the full sum of four hundred dollars, which he retained till he reached Philadelphia, and was very reluctant to use, and finally consented, only at my earnest instance.

I naturally concluded that if I could publish a speech from memory, without having taken a single note, I should certainly be able to take down debates, with the advantage of a seat, a table, and pens, ink and paper. Accordingly, on the 27th of August, 1785, I commenced the publication of the debates of the House of Assembly, without the least knowledge of stenography. I abridged and took down the leading words, and was enabled to fill up the chasms by memory and the context; and as the printers had then more scruples about pirating on each other, than some of them have at present, none of them republished the debates, of which the Pennsylvania Herald had, for that session, the exclusive advantage. John Dunlap, a respectable revolutionary character, who printed the Pennsylvania Packet, offered me a liberal compensation for the privilege of republication-but I declined, knowing that it would deprive the Herald of the very great superiority it possessed.

In the following session, Mr. Dunlap hired a stenographer, the wellknown Thomas Lloyd, who, though an excellent stenographer, so far as taking down notes, was a miserable hand at putting them in an English dress. I learned his system, which was one invented by the Jesuits at St. Omer's, but did not succeed better with it, than I had done before.

At this period, parties ran as high in Pennsylvania as they have done at any time since. The denominations were Constitutionalists and Republicans. The former were supporters of the constitution then existing, which conferred the legislative powers on a single body, styled the House of Assembly, and the executive department on a President and executive Council. The Republicans were zealous for a change in the legislature, so as to have two branches,-a Senate, and House of Representatives. There were various minor points of difference unnecessary to be particularized.

There was at that time a society of foreigners established in Philadelphia, from various nations, English, Irish, Scotch, French, and West-Indians, who styled themselves the newly adopted sons of the United States. Among the leaders were A. J. Dallas, the unfortunate Gerald, who, I believe, died in Botany Bay, Counsellor Heatly, Coulthurst, &c. &c. I was a member. The society was in perfect accordance in political opinions with the constitutional party, to which it became an auxiliary. As there were in it a number of zealous powerful writers, they greatly annoyed the Republican party.

Colonel Oswald, who was the mouth-piece of the latter party, assailed their opponents with great virulence, and particularly their new auxiliaries, whom he grossly abused as foreign renegadoes. I wrote a reply to one of his attacks, in which were the following remarks which did not warrant the very acrimonious, and personal attack which followed, on the part of the Colonel.

"National reflections are in every case as illiberal as they are unjust,—but from Americans, they are something worse. Yes, sir, I say they are something worse. It is a bold saying, and may prove disagreeable to nice ears--but it is not the less true. They are, sir, ungrateful to the highest degree. It is a fact, too recent and too notorious to admit a doubt, that a great part of those armies, that nobly gained America her independence, were aliens,' or 'foreigners,' many of whose countrymen are now subjects of obloquy and reproach. I mean, French, Germans, Irish, &c.