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So when thou hast, as I

Commanded thee, done blabbing ;
Althoughe to give the lye

Deserves no less than stabbing;
Yet stabb at thee who will,
No stabb the soul can kill.'

ART. V.-A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE LATE ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON, OF CLERMONT, N. Y.

Robert R. Livingston was born in the city of New-York, on the second day of September, 1747. His father was among the distinguished men of his name, long a member of the legislature, from the county of Duchess, and a judge of the supreme court of the province. His mother was the daughter and heiress of Colonel Henry Beekman, and eminent alike for piety, benevolence, knowledge and good sense. The advantages of a parentage like this, will be readily appreciated; they necessarily imply a careful and competent education, and the early and solid acquirements of Mr. Livingston, showed that the soil was not unworthy of the culture. He took his first degree, in the College of New-York, in the year 1765, and soon after entered the office of the late William Smith, Esq. as a student of law. On the expiration of this engagement, he was called to the bar, and subsequently appointed to the recordership of the city of NewYork—a judicial office, (then, as now,) both lucrative and honourable.

The time was however fast approaching, when to hold an appointment under the royal authority, was a distinction more to be avoided than desired. The great question of the rights of the colonies now agitated the community, and in the province of New-York, divided it into parties, nearly equal in strength, and entirely so in devotion to the principles they respectively professed. Between these, Mr. Livingston did not balance-for in him the dictates of conscience were those also of patriotism: he took side promptly and decisively with his country, and was soon called to assert her rights, and expose her wrongs, on that great theatre of national discussion-the floor of Congress. Among pigmies, a man of moderate size will be regarded as a giant; but to have been distinguished among such intellectual giants, as Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Jay, Henry, Dickenson, R. H. Lee, and William Livingston, is the highest, as it certainly is the purest, eulogium that can be pronounced upon him. At that happy era of our history, nothing was achieved by surprise or intrigue;-nothing was yielded to artificial charac

ter or consideration;-there were no successful combinations of little men, for selfish purposes;-no sectional confederacies to magnify virtues and conceal defects ;-no ridiculous attempts to puff and swell the human figure out of all its natural shapes and dimensions. Every candidate was scrutinised and weighed in the balance of truth, and the value of each stamped on the public opinion of the day.

How Mr. Livingston passed this trial, will be best gathered from the archives of Congress, which (besides noticing his agency in much business of an important but inferior character) associate him with Lee and Pendleton, in framing the Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain; with Jefferson, Franklin and John Adams, in preparing the Declaration of Independence; and with Samuel Adams, Dickenson and M'Kean, in digesting and presenting a form of National Government, subsequently adopted, under the name of Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. What particular share Mr. Livingston had in the productions which followed we do not know, and therefore will not assert-but if these committees performed their task as others of a similar character have done, there is no reason to believe but that each member contributed something to the work.

A multiplicity of counsel, so precious in legislative proceedings, is not found to be equally useful in executive business :— yet it was not till the year 1781, that Congress, becoming fully sensible of this great truth, and "of the fluctuation, delay, and indecision which were the result of managing their business by committees," proceeded to establish four Executive Departments; to the direction of one of which-that having cognizance of Foreign Affairs-Mr. Livingston was invited.

On this new and important theatre he continued to act until the peace of 1783, and, it is to be presumed, with the decided approbation of the body that appointed him-for, on retiring from office, he received "the thanks of Congress," and an "assurance of the high sense they entertained of the ability, zeal and fidelity, with which he had discharged the important trust reposed in him.”

During the early part of the period of which we have been speaking, though principally, Mr. Livingston was not exclusively, employed in national business. The State to which he belonged, notwithstanding the tardy and even equivocal steps which marked her carly revolutionary movements, was among the first in the Union to act upon the declaration of Independence-by framing for herself a new form of government under it; and to this end, she wisely called together the best and most enlightened heads of the community. In this respectable list we find the names of G. Clinton, Jay, Livingston, Yates,

Schuyler, G. Morris, and Scott. The product of their labours was honourable to themselves, felicitous to their constituents, and useful to the sister States, (who had yet the same ground to travel over;) and if time has discovered in it a few and small imperfections requiring modification or change, in what similar work of man may not the same degree of imperfections. be discovered? Under this new constitution, Mr. Livingston was appointed Chancellor of the state-an office which he continued to hold till the year 1801.

It is generally known, that the policy adopted by Washington, during the war waged in Europe, (1794) was that of strict neutrality; and that Mr. G. Morris, our minister at the court of France, was recalled at the instance of the French government, on a suggestion, that his conduct, personal or official, or both, had not sufficiently conformed to this principle. A fact perhaps less known is, that Mr. Livingston was the person selected by Washington, to fill this difficult and delicate mission. From causes, however, with which we are unacquainted, he at that time declined the appointment; but the offer being renewed in 1801 by Mr. Jefferson, it was then accepted; and he accordingly, in the autumn of that year, set out to execute his duties at Paris.

The relations between the United States and France, at this period, had taken a new extension and increased interest, from two causes: 1st, the continuance and accumulation of debts due on the part of France, to citizens of the United States, for spoliations committed on their commerce, during the war of the French revolution ;* and 2d, the acquisition, recently made, by France of the territory known by the name of Louisiana; and which necessarily brought that gigantic power into contact with us, on the whole of the long line of our western boundary. Mr. Livingston was therefore specially instructed to urge, by all proper arguments, the prompt liquidation and payment of the debts aforesaid; and to take early and effectual means to ascertain, whether the First Consul was disposed to sell, to the United States, such part of the newly acquired territory, as was supposed to lie on the eastern side of the Mississippi river? He ac

* These spoliations were committed under a decree of the French government, expressly violating her treaty engagements with the United States. Mr. Monroe (the successor of Mr. Morris) was instructed to demand a redress of the injury, but by some unaccountable perversion of intellect, was led to conclude

1st. That it made no part of his duty to remonstrate against this system of French robbery.

2d. That were it otherwise, it would be bad policy to do so: and

3d. That the government and people of the United States would both most cheerfully submit to it, if, on experiment, the French found it either useful or convenient!

cordingly opened the negociation early in January, 1803, and pressed the cession on the part of France, by a number of informal notes, written between that period and the 25th of February. Wishing, however, to approach his object more directly, and perhaps piqued at the delay put into the answers from the French Bureaus, he, on that day, took the hardy step of addressing a letter to the First Consul directly-in which the cession of territory and the discharge of the debts, were zealously and ably recommended for notice and provision. The result, as respected the debts, was prompt and fortunate, and as regarded the other and greater object, scarcely less successful. On the of March he was assured, that "the debts should be honourably settled and promptly paid," and on the 5th of April, the Emperor announced to the council of state his determination, "to sell whatever of American territory he had obtained from Spain ;"-and his decision, that "the price should not be less than eighty millions of francs." Seven days after this decision had been taken and communication made to the council of state, Mr. Monroe, who had been recently associated with Mr. Livingston in the negociation, arrived at Paris, and on the 30th of April, 1803, united with his colleague and the French plenipotentiary, in giving to these bases the form of a treaty.*

*Missions, of plural form, have been occasionally great favourites with our government. In the last negociation for peace, we had no fewer than five ministers at Ghent. The advantages by which this form is supposed to be recommended are:

1st. The increased chances it affords of the necessary qualifications.

2d. The effect it has of deciding the credit of a successful and important negociation: and,

3d. The means it furnishes of rewarding real friends-of securing or removing doubtful ones-of feeding the hungry, satisfying the curious, and silencing the noisy.

The objections to it are fewer, but more weighty, and resolve themselves, principally, into the excitements and animosities, which never fail to arise between those who do more, and others who do less; and which even an equality of labour and capacity, tends rather to increase than diminish. Many examples from our own history might be quoted in illustration of this truth-but it would be going too far out of our way to notice any other than the mission mentioned in the text, and which was certainly no exception to the general remark. Mr. Monroe and his friends were not satisfied with the small share that circumstances had permitted him to take in a business so important, and so likely to make strong and favourable impressions on public opinion. Means were accordingly employed, (and some of them not of the most laudable character) to lessen Mr. Livingston's credit in this transaction, and even to disseminate a belief, that, without the aid of Mr. Monroe, nothing either had been done, or could have been done. Of the extension and duration of this belief, we have a specimen as late as the year 1816, in an address, if we do not mistake, of a Mayor and Aldermen of a western city, which ascribed to Mr. Monroe exclusively, all the benefits that either had resulted, or that would result to the union, from the treaty of

"Having thus executed the two important trusts committed to him, and having completed his third year in Europe, Mr. Livingston now sought permission to return to the United States, and in the autumn of 1804, received notice of his virtual recall by the arrival of Gen. Armstrong, who had been appointed his successor. The season, however, not being favourable to a voyage across the Atlantic, he gave the winter and part of the spring to a tour through Switzerland, Germany, and Italy; and in June, 1805, returned to his scat on the Hudson, "loving and "respecting," as he often declared, "his own country and its "institutions better, exactly in proportion as he became more "intimately acquainted with the character and condition of "others."

With this mission to France, terminated the political life of Mr. Livingston, but not that of his public usefulness. In matters of taste, in the progress of the useful arts, in the improvement of the country, by roads, canals, planting, building, and agriculture, his mind was constantly and vigorously employed; and to his suggestions or example much of the present honourable impulse in these directions may be justly ascribed. On these important subjects, we more particularly quote the share he had in introducing among us the use of gypsum and clover; in making us acquainted with the Merino race of sheep; in instructing us in the qualities of that race, and in the most approved methods of managing it; and finally, in carrying into effect his own speculations and those of others, in relation to steam-boat navigation.

It may perhaps be expected that, according to the decision of the schools, we should now proceed to note the " parva si non sunt quotidie❞—those smaller circumstances, which take their importance only, or principally, from their daily occurrence; which form the bulk of every man's history, and which are supposed better to characterise than any public acts his physical and moral temperament and constitution. Without waiting to contest the authority of the rule, or to show its great liability to abuses, it will be enough, on this head, to remark, that in Mr. Livingston's domestic habits, we never have seen any thing peculiar to himself; unless we regard as such, an understanding never clouded a temper never disturbed-and manners habitually respectful and polite. These, as may be readily conceiv

Paris of 1803. The dose was, however, too powerful for the patient, and in a paroxysm of modesty and justice, he rebuked the adulation or the ignorance of his addressers, by putting them in mind, that something was due to his venerable colleague. We have here seen that this something was every thing.

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