Mr. Dickinson, the writer of the celebrated _Farmer’s Letters_, was a distinguished lawyer, statesman and scholar. Dr. Ramsay (who published his _History of the American Revolution_ at the close of the year 1789,) remarks, that “the stamp-act, which was to have taken place in 1765, employed the pens and tongues of many of the colonists,” and, that “the duties imposed in 1767, called forth the pen of John Dickinson, who in a series of letters, signed ‘_A Pennsylvania Farmer_,’ may be said to have sown the seeds of the revolution.” From the commencement of the momentous controversy between the North-American colonies and the parent state, Mr. Dickinson was an able and strenuous assertor of the rights of the colonists. In the summer of the year 1768, the Rev. Mr. Barton sent him a little artificial fountain or jet-d’eau, called a perpetual fountain, prettily contrived and ornamented. On that occasion, the patriotic feelings of Mr. Dickinson were thus expressed, in an handsome allusion to this engine; feelings, called forth by some sentiments contained in the letter which accompanied this small present,—“I wish” (said he, in his answer to Mr. Barton’s letter, dated the 29th of August,)—“I wish ‘a perpetual fountain’ may water the tree of American liberty—I shall always be ready and willing, with pious hands, to sprinkle its roots; even though, for every drop of the pure element I throw upon them, the free-booters should pour upon me all the foul waters in which they delight to dabble. I have acted from the best of motives, the love of freedom and of my country. If reproaches can influence the weak and malicious, they never can blot from my memory the pleasing consciousness of having endeavoured to do my duty. I am extremely sensible of my own frailties; and yet I think I have so much charity, that I reflect with pleasure, that perhaps these very people who abuse me, may derive some little advantage from those very actions of mine for which they abuse me. May heaven grant this to be the case! It is all the revenge I desire to take of them; and this I think, my good sir, is a Christian revenge.” Messrs. Allen, Ross, and Biddle, shall be noticed in another place.