BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE

OF

EDWARD LIVINGSTON,

READ BEFORE THE

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

BY

HENRY D. GILPIN.

PHILADELPHIA:

JOHN C. CLARK, PRINTER, 60 DOCK STREET.

1843.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE

OF

EDWARD LIVINGSTON.

I PROCEED in accordance with the custom of our Institution, to offer a notice, for preservation among its records, of one who while living was among the most distinguished of its members-of one who earned that distinction, not less by a long life of benevolence and virtue, than by the active exercise, through the various scenes of an eminent political and professional career, of a practical philosophy which found in them all constant opportunities to promote the happiness and the prosperity of society. Without disparaging the quiet labours of the student, who, in the tranquillity of his closet and under none but self-imposed restraints, elicits by patient reflection and sagacious reasoning, truths of enduring value; without depreciating that industry which in at least comparative seclusion from the more active and exciting duties of life, accumulates step by step, facts that make clear the mysteries of nature and extend the boundaries of useful knowledge; without detracting from the merit and the praise of those who in the pursuit of natural or exact science, and the elucidation of moral truths, more usually win, in the general estimation of the world, the praise and titles of philosophy-I may yet be per

mitted to say-1 am sure I shall be permitted here to say, in the hall of this venerable Institution, and surrounded by many of the ablest votaries of science of whom America can boast-that no one of these does Philosophy claim more justly and truly as her son, than he who, in the busy engagements of public life, where he is stimulated by ambition, and occupied by objects that are supposed most strongly to absorb the feelings, if not to warp the judgment and the taste, yet blends with all his actions the love of science, and the extension of truth, and applies that wisdom which springs only from knowledge and truth, to the affairs he is called upon to engage in or direct. The father of philosophy, the Stagyrite himself, was the minister and constant counsellor of his imperial pupil up to the moment when he crossed the Hellespont; Tully does not less preside as the acknowledged master of the Roman school, because he ceaselessly devoted himself from the beginning to the close of life, to all the duties of a statesman and a lawyer; and though the fame of Bacon has been almost wrecked amid the quicksands of politics and office, from which he could not tear himself, he maintains his place as a philosopher next only to the two great masters of Greece and Rome. The records of our own Institution are not wanting in illustrations of the same truth; for who will venture to believe that the wreath which science binds around the brows of Franklin and of Jefferson has lost any of its freshness, because they devoted through life their active energies to political pursuits. Indeed it seems to me that there is no class of her followers whom Philosophy should more proudly recognise, than those who forget not her lessons, and retain her animating and generous spirit, through a career which too generally centres in individual success; and although a name like that of Livingston may be conspicuous, as