A biographical memoir of Hugh Williamson, M.D., LL. D : delivered on the first of November, 1819, at the request of the New-York Historical Society / by David Hosack.

  • Hosack, David, 1769-1835.
Date:
1820
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A biographical memoir of Hugh Williamson, M.D., LL. D : delivered on the first of November, 1819, at the request of the New-York Historical Society / by David Hosack. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    They were not of the nature of private letters be- tween friends ; they were written by public officers to persons in public stations, on public affairs, and intended to procure public measures: they were therefore handed to other public persons who might be influenced by them to produce those measures. Their tendency was to incense the mother cou.jtry against her colonies, and by the steps recommended, to widen the breach, which they effected. The chief caution expressed with regard to privacy was, to keep their contents from the colony agents, who, the writers apprehended, might return them, or copies of them, to America. That apprehension was, it seems, well founded ; for the first agent who laid his hands on them thought it his duty to transmit them to his constituents.* In a letter on this subject, addressed to a friend, he also observes: On this occasion I one whom all Europe besides was emulously seeking to honour; and of whom the exalted countryman of Wedderburn, Lord Kames, wrote not long after in his Sketches of the History of Man. 'Dr. Franklin, of Phi- ladelphia, a man who makes a great figure in the learned world, and who would make a still greater figure for benevolence and candour, were virtue as much regarded in this declining age as knowledge.' Delaplaine's Repository of the Lives and Portraits of Distinguished Americans, vol. 2. * Franklin's Letter to the printer of the Daily Advertiser.