In politics, Rittenhouse was a good, simple, ignorant, well-meaning, Franklinian democrat, totally ignorant of the world. As an anchorite, an honest dupe of the French Revolution; a mere instrument of Jonathan Dickinson Sargent, Dr. Hutchinson, Genet, and Mifflin, I give him all the credit of his Planetarium. The improvement of the Orrery to the Planetarium was an easy, natural thought, and nothing was wanting but calculations of orbits Distranus, and periods of revolutions; all of which were made to his hands long before he existed. Patience, perseverance, and sleight of hand, is his undoubted merit and praise. I had read Taylor in the Senate, till his style was so familiar to me that I had not read three pages, before I suspected the author. I wrote a letter to him, and he candidly acknowledged that the six hundred and fifty pages were sent me with his consent. I wait with impatience for the publication, and annunciation of the work. Arator ought not to have been adulterated with politics, but his precept "Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost," is of inestimable value in agriculture and horticulture. Every weed, cob, husk, stalk, ought to be saved for manure.
Your researches in the laws of England establishing Christianity as the law of the land, and part of the common law, are curious and very important. Questions without number will arise in this country. Religious controversies, and ecclesiastical contests, are as common, and will be as sharp as any in civil politics, foreign and domestic. In what sense, and to what extent the Bible is law, may give rise to as many doubts and quarrels as any of our civil, political, military, or maritime laws, and will intermix with them all, to irritate factions of every sort. I dare not look beyond my nose into futurity. Our money, our commerce, our religion, our National and State Constitutions, even our arts and sciences, are so many seed plots, of division, faction, sedition and rebellion. Everything is transmuted into an instrument of electioneering. Election is the grand Brahma, the immortal Lama, I had almost said, the Juggernaut; for wives are almost ready to burn upon the pile, and children to be thrown under the wheel. You will perceive, by these figures, that I have been looking into oriental history, and Hindoo religion. I have read voyages, and travels, and everything I could collect, and the last is Priestley's "Comparison of the Institutions of Moses with those of the Hindoos, and other Ancient Nations," a work of great labor, and not less haste. I thank him for the labor, and forgive, though I lament the hurry. You would be fatigued to read, and I, just recruiting from a little longer confinement and indisposition than I have had for thirty years, have not strength to write many observations. But I have been disappointed in the principal points of my curiosity: