Dr. Rittenhouse’s brother Benjamin, in a written communication made to the writer of these memoirs in the year 1796, observes, that the Doctor, “when in health, was cheerful; and his passions, unless they were excited by the abuses and knavery of men, either in public or private life, were moderate: but where he conceived that the interest or liberties of his country were endangered, he would, on those occasions, express himself with great warmth and asperity.” ----- His long continued habits of contemplation and study, and his seclusion from the busy world until the full meridian of life, created in his mind a fondness for tranquillity. This disposition, co-operating with his humanity and love of justice, made him a friend to peace; insomuch, that he deprecated a state of warfare, even in cases attended by colourable pretexts of right and expediency, for engaging in it. Hence, he could not refrain from attaching to the late warlike Sovereign of Prussia, “the mighty Frederick,” the appellation of “Tyrant of the North and Scourge of Mankind;”[313] believing, as he did, that this monarch was more influenced by an unfeeling personal ambition and thirst of military fame, than either by the justness of his cause or a desire to promote the happiness of his subjects. ----- Footnote 313: See his _Oration_. ----- With such feelings and such views of the subject as these, our Philosopher could not consider that as a justifiable cause of war, which has not for its object, either the defence of a country against an hostile invader, or the security of the state and the support of the liberties of the people, against treasonable domestic insurrections.[314] ----- Footnote 314: It was publicly declared by the same acrimonious writer who charged Dr. Rittenhouse with being an atheist, (namely, Mr. William Cobbett,) and with an equal disregard of truth, as has been already shewn, that the Doctor signed “the inflammatory Resolutions” of the Democratic Society against the Excise-law, which, as he alleged, produced the Western Insurrection in Pennsylvania, in the year 1794. Dr. Rittenhouse, it is well known, did not even attend the meetings of that society. This is admitted by Mr. Cobbett himself, in the following invidious paragraph, extracted from a pamphlet written and published by the late William L. Smith, Esq. of South-Carolina, and republished by Cobbett in his own works: it is in these words—“Rittenhouse was a great philosopher; but the only proof we have had of his political talents, was, his suffering himself to be wheedled into the presidency of the democratic society of Philadelphia; a society with which he was even ashamed to associate, though cajoled and flattered into the loan of his name.” -----