When Dr. Rittenhouse resigned the Directorship of the Mint, in June 1792, he was succeeded in that office by Henry William De Saussure, Esq. of South Carolina, a gentleman of distinguished talents and respectability. But Mr. De Saussure did not long hold the appointment: Some invidious and illiberal, as well as ill-founded insinuations, were soon cast upon the establishment and the manner in which it was conducted, by certain persons in the government, who had very early evinced an hostility to the institution itself; and it is not improbable, that some of this description were also influenced in their inimical views towards it, by personal considerations. Mr. De Saussure, disgusted with such unworthy conduct, retired from the Directorship, after having held that office only a few months; during which short period, he executed his trust in such a manner, as to obtain the approbation of President Washington, and entitle him to the public esteem. The following letter, which was addressed by Mr. De Saussure to the editors of the Charleston City Gazette, and published in that paper, soon after his resignation, will serve to elucidate this subject: as a vindication of that gentleman, and also of his predecessor, from the injurious aspersions so unjustly thrown out against the institution of the Mint by its enemies, that publication is entitled to a place in the Memoirs of Rittenhouse; it shall now close the narrative of Dr. Rittenhouse’s connexion with the Mint. “Messrs. Freneau and Payne, “I was filled with no less indignation than surprise, on reading the debates in the house of representatives of the United States, on Tuesday the 19th of January, respecting the Mint, to find that a good deal of censure had been thrown out by some of the members against the management of that establishment, in such general and indiscriminating terms as might be deemed to implicate me, during the short time I was in the Directorship. “Several members spoke in hasty and unguarded terms; and one member, whose name the printer had not given, passed all the bounds of moderation. He is represented as having said, “that the institution is a bad one, and is badly conducted: it had been most scandalously carried on, and with very little advantage to the public. If the institution is not better carried on than it has been, it ought to be thrown aside.”—If I could tamely endure these imputations, which in their generality may be supposed to reach me, I should be unworthy the esteem of my fellow-citizens.