JAMES SMITH.

JAMES SMITH, of York county, in Pennsylvania, was perhaps the most eccentric in character of the illustrious men that had the happiness to affix their names to the Declaration of Independence.

Ireland may claim the honour of being his native land; and he retained to the latest hours of a protracted life, that openness of heart and raciness of humour, for which Irishmen are often remarkable, but united with the regular industry and steady virtues that were improved if not implanted by his American education.

The date of his birth has not been ascertained; it was a secret which he carried with him to the grave, an invincible reluctance to reveal his age, even to his nearest relatives or most confidential friends, being one of his peculiarities which remained after he had long survived the period when vanity or interest could possibly supply a motive for it.

It was believed by some members of his family that he was born in the year seventeen hundred and thirteen, while others would place that event eight or nine years later ;-the truth lies between these two conjectures.

At the age of ten or twelve he came to this country with his father, a respectable farmer, who brought with him a numerous offspring to find a home in the new world. The fa

mily adopted a residence on the west side of the Susquehannah, where the father, after seeing his surviving children well provided for, breathed his last in the year 1761, leaving a well deserved reputation for benevolence aud honesty.

James Smith, the subject of our present notice, was the second son, and was placed for education under the immediate care of the celebrated Dr. Allison, provost of the college at Philadelphia, by whose instructions he so far profited as to acquire a respectable knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, and a taste for classical allusion that endured to the termination of his life.

He also became skilful in surveying, an art of peculiar usefulness and dignity at that early period, when enterprise and capital were so generally directed to the purchase of lands, and when no man without some proficiency in the use of the compass and chain, could ascertain his own or his neighbour's boundaries.

With these preparatory acquirements he applied himself to the study of the law, either in the office of Thomas Cookson, or of his elder brother, who had become a practising lawyer in the town of Lancaster, but died in early manhood, when James had scarcely completed his pupillage.

It is believed that he did not attempt to practise his profession at Lancaster; but immediately after his brother's death removed far into the woods, and established himself, in the blended character of a lawyer and surveyor in the vicinity of the present site of Shippensburg. The propensity to buy wild lands as a matter of speculation, and the inaccurate surveys frequently made for distant purchasers, had already begun to operate as the sources of abundant litigation in Pennsylvania, and supplied Mr. Smith with very active occupation at this early period, as they continued to do until he final

ly relinquished the profession, after an industrious and able exercise of it during nearly sixty years.

After a few years passed in this remote situation, he took up his abode in the flourishing village of York, where he continued to reside all the rest of his life; and he practised his profession there with great credit and profit; and under circumstances peculiarly favourable to tranquillity and comfort, for he was, during many years, the only lawyer at the place.

It was in this prosperous condition of his fortunes he married Miss Eleanor Armor, of New Castle; and he continued to be the sole practitioner of the law residing at York, although Jasper Yeates, afterwards the distinguished judge of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, and other young men, attended the courts there, as Mr. Smith did those of the neighbouring counties.

In the year 1769, Mr. Hartley, afterwards a colonel in the revolutionary army, made the second lawyer at York; but Mr. Smith retained his position at the head of the bar, and continued a career of uninterrupted professional assiduity and success, up to the commencement of the war.

During this period of his life, he was quite as much distinguished for his powers of entertainment, his drollery, his humorous stories, and his love of conviviality, as for his talents and success in the practice of the law.

His memory was remarkably retentive of anecdotes, and his perception of the ridiculous quick and unerring. With these powers, a well regulated temper and great benevolence, it is not to be wondered at that he should have been the delight of the social circle, should have inclined to the company of younger persons, and should frequently have set the court house as well as the tavern bar room in a roar of laughter.

Yet though he loved wine, and drank much of it, he was never known to be intoxicated; and though he was often the cause of most obstreperous mirth, he always maintained the dignity of his own character.

It is to be remembered, to his honour, that even in the midst of his most extravagant sallies, he never uttered, nor permitted in his presence, a jest which was aimed at religion or its ministers. He was indeed a communicant, and regularly attended the church in the morning of every Sabbath; but could with difficulty be persuaded to go in the afternoon, being accustomed to say, in a manner which is described as irresistibly comic, that a second sermon in the same day always put the first one entirely out of his head. Few of his witticisms have been remembered; indeed their effect seems to have depended entirely on the manner and accompanying circumstances. A gentleman who passed a part of the year 1773, in York, thus describes his peculiar humour: "The most trivial incident from his mouth was stamped with his originality; and in relating one evening how he had been disturbed in his office by a cow, he gave inconceivable zest to his narration, by his manner of telling how she thrust her nose into the door and there roared like a Numidian lion. With a sufficiency of various reading to furnish him with materials for ridiculous allusions and incongruous combinations, he was never so successful as when he could find a learned pedant to play upon; and judge Stedman, when mellow, was best calculated for his butt: the judge was a Scotchman, a man of reading and erudition, though extremely magisterial and dogmatical in his cups. This it was which gave point to the humour of Smith, who, as if desirous of coming in for his share of the glory, while Stedman was in full display of his historical knowledge, never failed to set him raving by some monstrous anachronism; such, for instance, as, "Don't you

remember, Mr. Stedman, that terrible bloody battle which Alexander the Great fought with the Russians near the straits of Babelmandel?" "What, sir!" said Stedman, repeating with ineffable contempt, "which Alexander the Great fought with the Russians! where, mon, did you get your chronology?" "I think you will find it recorded, Mr. Stedman, in Thucydides or Herodotus." On another occasion, being asked for his authority for some enormous assertion, in which both space and time were fairly annihilated, with unshaken gravity he replied, "I am pretty sure I have seen an account of it, Mr. Stedman, in a High Dutch almanack, printed at Aleepo," his drawling way of pronouncing Aleppo. While every one at table was holding his sides at the expense of the judge, he on his part had no doubt that Smith was the object of the laughter, as he was of his own unutterable disdain."

But a time was approaching when distinction was to be acquired, and eminence maintained, by the exercise of other talents than those which were fitted to enliven a convivial party. The clouds of war already lowered on the horizon; and every prominent man was obliged to take his part in the momentous struggle.

When in the spring of the year 1774, intelligence was received of the enactment of the bill closing the port of Boston, the disputes between the colonies and the mother country began to be seen and understood in their true light, as irreconcilable without concessions not likely to be made on either side, and tending manifestly to a desperate and bloody contest.

The prophetic forebodings of Josiah Quincy, uttered on a preceding occasion, had rung through the land like the sound of an alarm bell. "We must be grossly ignorant," this eloquent patriot had said, "of the importance and value of the prize for which we contend; we must be equally ignorant of VOL. III.-C c