Page:Republican Court by Rufus Griswold.djvu/32

This page needs to be proofread.

16

THE REPUBLICAN COURT.

manding influence in the early history of Pennsylvania. His son was Mr. Thomas Willing, a man whose virtues have been recorded with a truth and eloquence which heighten the dignity of even such a character as his.^[1]

V.

In all civil wars men of hereditary rank and fortune are apt to adhere to the established authority, and this was eminently true in the war which led to American Independence. The loyalists were in a large degree people of good condition, accomplished in manners as well as in learning, and by their defection the country lost many persons who at the end of the contest would have been among her most useful citizens, and the brightest ornaments of her domestic life. The Fairfaxes, Galloways, Dulaneys, Delanceys, Robinsons, Penns, Phillipses, Whites, and others, if of the Whig party would probably have been even more distinguished in society than in affairs, though the military and civil abilities which some of them displayed against us, or in foreign countries, showed that they might have nobly served their fatherland in these capacities, and participated with the most successful and most honored of her faithful sons, in her affections and her grateful rewards. However strongly influenced by considerations of justice, many of them must have shared the feelings attributed by Freneau to Hugh Gaine, on dis-

↑ The following inscription, copied from a monument in Christ Church grounds, Philadelphia, is understood to be from the pen of Mr. Horace Binney:

"In memory of Thomas Willing, Esquire, born nineteenth of December, 1731, O. S., died nineteenth of January, 1821, aged eighty-nine years and thirty days. This excellent man, in all the relations of private life, and in various stations of high public trust, deserved and acquired the devoted affection of his family and friends, and the universal respect of his fellow-citizens. From 1754 to 1807 he successively held the offices of secretary to the Congress of Delegates at Albany, mayor of the city of Philadelphia, her representative in the General Assembly, President of the Provincial Congress, delegate to the Congress of the Confederation, President of the first chartered Bank in America and President of the first Bank of the United States. With these public duties, he united the business of an active, enterprising, and successful merchant, in which pursuit, for sixty years, his life was rich in examples of the influence of probity, fidelity, and perseverance upon the stability of commercial establishments, and upon that which was his distinguished reward upon earth, public consideration and esteem. His profound adoration of the Great Supreme, and his deep sense of dependence on his mercy, in life and in death, gave him, at the close of his protracted years, the humble hope of a superior one in Heaven."

[1] The following inscription, copied from a monument in Christ Church grounds, Philadelphia, is understood to be from the pen of Mr. Horace Binney:

"In memory of Thomas Willing, Esquire, born nineteenth of December, 1731, O. S., died nineteenth of January, 1821, aged eighty-nine years and thirty days. This excellent man, in all the relations of private life, and in various stations of high public trust, deserved and acquired the devoted affection of his family and friends, and the universal respect of his fellow-citizens. From 1754 to 1807 he successively held the offices of secretary to the Congress of Delegates at Albany, mayor of the city of Philadelphia, her representative in the General Assembly, President of the Provincial Congress, delegate to the Congress of the Confederation, President of the first chartered Bank in America and President of the first Bank of the United States. With these public duties, he united the business of an active, enterprising, and successful merchant, in which pursuit, for sixty years, his life was rich in examples of the influence of probity, fidelity, and perseverance upon the stability of commercial establishments, and upon that which was his distinguished reward upon earth, public consideration and esteem. His profound adoration of the Great Supreme, and his deep sense of dependence on his mercy, in life and in death, gave him, at the close of his protracted years, the humble hope of a superior one in Heaven."

[1]