Alexandria Gazette

MISCELLANEOUS.

THE RESIDENCE OF ROBT. MORRIS

We note that the residence of Robert Morris the financier of the Revolution, is being razed to make room for another temple dedicated to King Commerce. The change is well enough, for the virtues of a good man should have other monuments than brick and mortar; and while the Declaration of Independence endures, Robert Morris will not be without one; yet we cannot but regret it. The house was, during the Revolution, the head quarters of those who did its most arduous labors, the purveyors of its treasury. There were gathered the men who, in the darkest hours of the Revolution, when our credit was a shadow at which the beggar mocked, raised, by exertions, not dazzling nor popular, and by sacrifices that expected neither gratitude nor reward, the means of preserving the army from dissolution, and the country from despair. There Robert Morris was induced, by the entreaties of his friend, the Father of his Country, to stake his private fortune upon the desperate venture of the Revolution, and to afford the means, from his own purse, that carried out the movement against Yorktown which closed the struggle.

Robert Morris won no battles, made no speeches, laid no claim to applause, and is now mainly remembered for his misfortunes; but there is not a free breath drawn by an American whom his virtues, labors and sacrifices did not make free—His reward was—but perhaps it is better that the reminiscence should not be urged it might prove that republics are ungrateful. His home was the home of every patriot, his board was spread for those who had else fasted; and even members of Congress—for that was before the era of eight dollars per diem— and elevated officers of the army, were enabled to maintain their position only by draughts upon his purse. The mansion is going down—the halls that were thronged with war-worn heroes, in their faded buff and blue—and which was for some time the Head Quarters of Washington himself—will soon be levelled to the ground; and in its place will stand a mansion of mammon—where no revolutions will be thought of but those of cottonism and flour, and no rights discussed but those of meum and tuum. So be it: it is the spirit of the age, and he must be a bold man who opposes it.—North Am.