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LIFE

OF THE

HON. NATHANIEL MACON,

OF NORTH CAROLINA;

IN WHICH THERE IS DISPLAYED

STRIKING INSTANCES OF VIRTUE, ENTERPRISE, COUR-
AGE, GENEROSITY AND PATRIOTISM.

HIS PUBLIC LIFE:

Illustrating the blessing of political union, the miseries of faction,—and the
mischiefs of despotic power in any government.

HIS PRIVATE LIFE:

Furnishing lessons upon the science of social happiness and religious freedom,
of greater value perhaps, than are to be found in the biography of any
other character, either ancient or modern,-"having lived
and died without an enemy."

BY EDWARD R. COTTEN,

OF NORTH CAROLINA:

BALTIMORE:
Printed by Lucas & Deaver.

1840.

Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1840, by Edward R. Cotten, in the Clerk's Office, of the District Court of Maryland.

Best Sather

TO THE READER.

AN author, who produces a book, be it good or bad, in some measure exhibits his heart to the world, provided this book contains thoughts which, if he has not invented, (and indeed in our days there is little left for invention,) he has at least found and made his own. He not only reveals the subjects, that have employed his thoughts at certain periods, the doubts that have occurred to perplex him in his journey through life, and the solutions, with which he has removed them; but he reckons upon some minds in unison with his own, be they ever so few, to which these or similar ideas will prove of importance in the labyrinth of life. This is the most estimable merit of authorship, and a man of good heart will feel much less pleasure from what he says, than from what he excites.

He who reflects, how opportunely this or that book, or merely this or that hint in a book, has sometimes fallen in his way; what pleasure it has afforded him, to perceive a distant mind, yet actively near him in his own, and how such a hint has often occupied for years, and led him on still farther: will consider an author who converses with him, and imparts to him his inmost

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thoughts, not as one who labours for hire, but as a friend who confidentially discloses his yet imperfect ideas, that the more experienced reader, who may think in concert with him, may improve upon them. This invisible commerce of hearts and minds is the one great benefit of printing, without which it would be of as much injury as advantage to a literary nation.

It was a custom among the ancient Romans, to preserve, in wax, the figures of those, among their ancestors whose personal merits and rare exploits had procured them the honors of their country; that their countrymen by beholding those likenesses might have enkindled in their breast so ardent a thirst after virtue as could not be extinguished, till by the glory of their own actions they had equalled the illustrious objects of their emulation.

The good sense of mankind, confirmed by the lapse of ages, have fixed this point, that example is that sort of rhetorick which at the same time convinces and persuades, constraining the assent of the judgment to that fine remark, "could we see virtue in all her charms, she would ravish all our hearts,”—while vice and ignorance, seen in all their horrid deformities, would dispose us to turn away from them with loathing and abhorrence; hence the biography of meritorious men, correctly portrayed, must be of universal consequence. Well might Dr. Johnson say, "no species of writing seemed more worthy of cultivation than biography, since none can be more delightful or more useful, nor can more certainly enchain the heart by irresistible interest, or more widely diffuse instruction to every diversity of condition."

The author of the present work considering himself in the circle of those, who actually felt themselves interested in the subject on which he wrote, and on which he was desirous of calling forth and participating their better thoughts,-in offering to their patronage and the public, the present volume, intended as a tribute to the personal virtues and public services of the distinguished individual who is the subject of it,-flatters himself that he performs a service which will obtain their appro bation and support. That his incapacity to do entire justice to such a subject, and that his design and its execution have not received that high finish that he wished and of which the subject was susceptible, he readily acknowledges. Yet he trusts it will be acceptable to the public, from the consideration, that every tribute of this nature, paid to a public benefactor, is a public good. And the severity of their censures and the asperities of their criticisms should be some what mitigated, from the motives of the undertaking.

That historians generally have written under the impulse of a thousand different passions, the author is well aware. That the politician has heretofore represented man, as divided into nobility and commonality, into papist and hugurnots, into soldiers and slaves,-the moralist into avaricious, hypocritical, the debauched the proud, the tragic poet into tyrants, and their victims,— the comic into drolls, and buffoons,-and the physician into the pituitous, billious and the plegmatic, exhibiting: them as subjects of aversions, of hatred, or of contempt, until man universally dissected by them, nothing now is shewn of him, but the carcase. He is also well aware, that by the perversion of his reason

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