From 1812 to 1818, inclusive, Mr. Murphy was continually a Senator from the county of Orange in the General Assembly, and on this new theatre shone more conspicuously than he had done in his profession. He inaugurated a new era in the public policy of the State, and for many years exerted a greater influence in her counsels than any other citizen. Judging from the public documents which he has left behind him in advocacy of this policy, no man ever brought into our legislative halls a more ardent spirit of patriotism, a more thorough survey and comprehension of her situation and wants, or proposed bolder or more intelligent measures for her relief. Whether these measures failed from error in their conception or timidity in his contemporaries to meet and boldly sustain them, the historian must pronounce that his reports and other writings in regard to them are the noblest monuments of philosophic statesmanship to be found in our public archives since the days of the Revolution. From 1815 to 1823, either as chairman of a committee in the Legislature or of the Board of Internal Improvement, he annually prepared a report on the public policy of the State in relation to her improvement in the means of transportation, and in 1819 he published a memoir on improvements contemplated and the resources and finances of the State, dedicated to his friend John Branch, then her Governor; any one of which papers would have done honor to DeWitt Clinton or Calhoun, the champions of internal improvement in the State and Federal governments, respectively, during that period. Fully appreciating the condition of the world resulting from the general peace consequent on the battle of Waterloo and the overthrow of the first Napoleon (since which time there has been a greater advance in all the useful arts and diffusion of the comforts of life among mankind than in any five preceding centuries), he applied all the energies of his intrepid and well-furnished mind to the task of devising how his native State should most profit in this universal calm, confer the greatest good on the greatest number of her people, and resume her proper rank in the Union of which she was a member. His solution of this important problem he seems to have summed up in three propositions, namely: first by improving her means of transportation, in deepening her inlets from the ocean, opening her rivers for navigation, connecting these rivers by canals, and constructing turnpike or macadamized roads, so as to concentrate all her trade at two or three points within her own limits; second, by building up commercial cities of her own at these points, with a view to commercial independence of other States, to the better regulation and control of her currency and exchanges, and to cherish and stimulate a just State pride; third, by a system of education commensurate with the State's necessities, embracing primary schools, academies for instruction in the higher branches,