The private character of this truly great man was, in all respects, amiable and untarnished. It always stood beyond the reach of slander, a pure, unsullied sheet. As a friend, he was warm-hearted and benevolent; as a husband, kind and affectionate; as a father, discreet and exemplary; consistently indulgent, and faithful in imparting that instruction and advice to his children calculated to prepare them for future usefulness and respect.
In 1798, on the 28th of August, this venerable sage, eminent lawyer, able statesman, and profound judge, took his exit “to that country from whose bourne no traveller returns,” in the fifty-sixth year of his age. He died whilst on his circuit, of stranguary, in the hospitable mansion of his colleague, Judge Iredell, in Edenton, North Carolina, where his ashes rest in peace beneath the clods of the valley.
In reviewing the life of this worthy man, no one can doubt his patriotism and purity. No one can doubt his devotedness to the American cause and his firm and uniform opposition to British oppression. Influenced, as he was, by the noblest motives; guided, as he was, by liberal principles, it is painful to reflect, that he was often wounded in the house of his professed friends, and placed under the castigating lash of persecution by those who had sworn to support the same cause he so ardently and ably espoused. The solution of the problem may be found in the present state of things, without travelling back to that time, of all others, when party should have hidden its hydra head.
At the present day, the dark intrigues of party are proverbial. Low cunning is practised by men in the same ranks, to over-reach an approaching rival, and all the machinery of slander put in requisition to destroy him. Is he a man of superior talents and worth? Means proportionably base must be resorted to, in order to insure his destruction and drive him from the course. Disgusted at such corruption, the very men best calculated to advance our dearest interests and add new lustre to our national glory, are those who most dread the political arena and shrink from the public gaze. How small a proportion of such men as James Wilson, Benjamin Franklin, and others of the same stamina, are now to be found in our legislative halls. We pay large sums of money every year for _party_ legislation, and but a small proportion of business is accomplished, calculated to benefit our country. Let the people, the YEOMANRY, awake to this subject, and no longer be led blindfold towards the vortex of destruction. Unless we are true to ourselves, we need not expect purity in our legislators. The genuine salt grows less and less as time advances, and a dangerous carelessness is annually manifested in selecting men of proper industry and purity of moral and republican principles to transact our public business. Some of them are victims of the artful and designing, or are mere partisans, legislating for themselves and their immediate friends more than for the advancement of public good and national glory. These are facts that are self-evident to every reflecting, observing man, facts that demand our serious attention and timely correction, before the unholy leaven extends its baneful influence so far as to destroy our beautiful fabric of LIBERTY, and prostrate, at one bold stroke, the hopes of FREEMEN.