mittee of Safety, to arrange for casting cannon; to view a site for the erection of a Continental powder-mill; to conduct experiments for rifling cannon and musket balls; to devise a method of fastening a chain for the protection of the river; to superintend the manufacture of saltpeter, and to locate a magazine for military stores. He was a member of the Committee of Safety in April, its vice-president in August, and its presiding officer in November, 1776. In 1776 he was a member of the Assembly from Philadelphia, and a member of the first Constitutional Convention of Pennsylvania; a member of the Board of War; and one of the Council of Safety, which had absolute powers. He was the first State Treasurer of Pennsylvania, from 1777 to 1789, when he declined to serve any longer. He was the first Director of the United States Mint, serving for three years from 1792; and he was called upon on several occasions to serve on commissions for the adjustment of boundaries. In connection with these public employments we find a curious letter from Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Rittenhouse, written in 1778, protesting against his wasting his abilities on affairs of state. "I am satisfied," he says, "that there is an order of geniuses above that obligation [to conduct government], and therefore exempt from it. No one can conceive that Nature ever intended to throw away a Newton upon the occupations of a crown. It would have been a prodigality for which even the conduct of Providence might have been arraigned, had he been by birth annexed to what was so far below him. . . . I doubt not there are in your country many persons equal to the task of conducting government; but you should consider that the world has but one Rittenhouse, and that it never had one before."
Mr. Rittenhouse was Professor of Astronomy in the University of Pennsylvania from 1779 till 1782, and was a trustee of the institution, continuing in that office after its reorganization in 1791. He was made one of the secretaries of the American Philosophical Society in 1771; became its vice-president in 1786; and succeeded Benjamin Franklin as president, on his death in 1790. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1782, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society in 1795. He received degrees from the College of Philadelphia, William and Mary College, and Princeton College.
He was tall and slender, quick in gait, had a countenance "indicative of intelligence, complacency, and goodness," and a disposition and manners that secured him friends and kept them. He bore testimony against the slave trade, and sympathized with the original motives of the French Revolution to such an extent that he assisted in the organization of the Democratic Society, and was made its president—but this was before the excesses of the Revolution were committed. While he
