THE

MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE

AND

COMMERCIAL REVIEW.

APRIL, 1864.

PELATIAH PERIT,

LATELY PRESIDENT OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, AND OF THE SEAMEN'S SAVING BANK, NEW YORK.

BY REV. LEONARD BACON, D. D., OF NEW HAVEN.

*

A MAN eminent in the profession which had been his employment more than fiffy years, venerable among the few survivors of a former generation, and widely honored for his wisdom and his beneficence, has passed away. To him we may apply the words in which the Idumean Patriarch speaks of himself and of the honor and affection which waited upon him in the days of his prosperity: "When the ear heard me, then it blessed me, and when the eye saw me it gave witness unto me."-Job xxix. 11. Who that has seen the dignified figure and the benevolent and cheerful countenance of PELATIAH PERIT Since he began to reside among us-who that has known anything of his character and life-who that knows the esteem and veneration which attended him in that great community of merchants of which he was so long an acknowledged head-can fail to see some degree of resemblance between the princely Patriarch in the land of Uz three thousand years ago, and the princely merchant whose burial here has just added another to the honored graves in our New Haven burying ground!

I cannot hope to satisfy the feeling which has induced me to attempt, not uninvited, this memorial. All that I can do, is to give an imperfect outline of Mr. PERIT's life, as illustrating his character, and as yielding some lessons worthy of our thoughtful attention.

PELATIAH PERIT, the son of JOHN PERIT, a merchant, (whose family name indicates his descent from that Huguenot imigration into New

* Mr. PERIT removed to New Haven in the fall of the year 1859 since which time he has attended Dr. Bacon's Church. We feel very sensibly that no pen could so fittingly portray the excellencies of this eminently Christian merchant as that o bis able and appreciative pastor.-Ed. HUNT'S MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE.

England, which has contributed its full share of illustrious names to our history,) was born at Norwich, June 23, 1785. His mother was a daughter of PELATIAH WEBSTER, and to her second son she gave her father's Christian name, her husband's name having been already given in connection with her own family name to the elder son JOHN WEBSTER PERIT. PELATIAH WEBSTER was not undistinguished as a merchant, a man of letters, and a patriot. Born at Lebanon in 1725, and educated at Yale College, where he graduated in 1746, he was a classmate, an intimate friend, and a life-long correspondent of the learned President STILES. At about the age of thirty years he engaged in mercantile business, "more from necessity than from inclination," the clerical profession having been his earlier choice. He established himself in Philadelphia, and soon began to prosper. Before the commencement of the revolutionary war, he had acquired a considerable estate, but had never lost his love for study or of literary labor. As might be inferred from his intimacy with President STILES, he was an earnest lover of his country, and was active in the assertion of American rights against the aggressions of the British Government. While the British forces occupied Philadelphia, he was arrested for his loyalty to his country, and was closely imprisoned in the city jail more than four months, and plundered of a large portion of his property. Early in the progress of the national struggle for independence he directed his studies to the currency, the finances, and the resources of the country. As early as October, 1776, he published a pamphlet on the great question in every war, "How to sustain the public credit." Three years later he commenced the publication of a series of "Political Essays on commercial and financial questions," which were collected and republished in 1791. The seat of the national government being at Philadelphia for the first few years after the adoption of the Federal Constitution, Mr. WEBSTER was often consulted by members of Congress who desired to avail themselves of his intelligence and experience in matters of public economy. Senators and representatives, especially from his native State, often spent their evenings at his house in free and earnest conversation on such subjects. These things are mentioned because of their connection with the childhood of Mr. PERIT. His mother's home, after the early death of her husband, was in her father's house, and there the mind of her son, almost from infancy, began to be interested in questions relating to the commerce and resources of the country; just as any intelligent and gifted child is always interested to some degree in whatsoever is a constant theme of discussion at home among those whom he most respects. Those evenings of free talk between his grandfather and men eminent and honored in public life were always among the cherished recollections of his childhood; and they had their effect upon his intellectual tastes and habits, and afterwards upon his choice of a profession.

His grandfather died in the year 1795, and not long afterwards his mother, with her two boys, removed her residence to this town for the purpose of educating them at the college which had been her father's alma mater. After completing their preparatory studies at the Hopkin's Grammar School, they became students in Yale College. The elder of the two brothers, JOHN WEBSTER PERIT, graduated in 1801, and afterwards became a distinguished China merchant in Philadelphia, where he died about twenty years ago. PELATIAH PERIT graduated in the class of 1802, a class which was in many respects distinguished. Entering upon

the four years course just as President DWIGHT was completing those changes by which the college system was adapted to the new order of things in the country, when his great power in the college pulpit as well as in the teacher's chair was at its height, and when the celebrity of his name was beginning to fill the whole country, it was the first class which, because of its numbers, was placed in two divisions under the care of tw tutors. Of those two tutors, one was HENRY DAVIS, who was afterward President of Middlebury College, then elected President of Yale College, to fill the place of President DWIGHT, then President of Hamilton College. The other was that eminent man, still lingering among us in his venerable age, President DAY. From these two men, aided only by a few lectures from a professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, the two divisions of the class received all their instruction through the first three years of their course. Then, through the remaining year, they were under the immediate and almost exclusive instruction of the President. No former class since the founding of the institution, had ever been so favored in the character of its teachers. At the same time the class was distinguished throughout its course by orderliness, sobriety and good behaviour. No member of it ever incurred any of the higher college censures, such as expulsion, rustication and public admonition. They had, all of them, or nearly all, come to college with the intelligent and manly purpose of preparing themselves, by a liberal education, for honorable usefulness in society. Thus their influence upon each other--and let it be remembered that the mutual influence of class-mates is a most important element in the process of a college education-was salutary instead of being mischievous, and was a help instead of being a hindrance to the influence of their teachers.

Another distinction of that class was at the time unprecedented, and, in some respects, will ever remain unparalleled. That I may explain this let me say that at the beginning of President DWIGHT's administration, (in 1795,) irreligious opinions such as then were widely current in the country, had obtained great ascendency among the college students. The time was a critical one in the history of Christianity here and throughout the world, and the religious condition of the college was very much what we might presume it would be at such a time, when skeptical habits of thinking, on all the themes both of the Christian revelation and of natural religion, were far more prevalent among educated and half-edu. cated men than now. Those extraordinary revivings of religious thought and feeling by which the Spirit of the Lord lifted up a standard against the enemy, and turned back the incoming flood of infidelity, had not then begun in the churches. Consequently the young men who came to college from parishes and families in which the influence of the Puritan discipline still lingered, and who were of blameless morals, according to the standard at those times, came generally without any deep religious convictions and principles, and too generally went as they came. When that class of 1802 entered college in 1798, only one of the sixty or more made any profession of having experienced the power of godliness, and that one died before the third year of their course was ended. During three and a half of those four years, very few of the students were members of the college church. At the administration of the Lord's supper in September, 1801, (the Sabbath before commencement,) not one undergraduate was present as a communicant. But in March, 1802, there began the first great re

viving of religion that had taken place within the college walls in more than half a century. On the Sabbath preceeding the commencement in that year, twenty-four of the class then graduating, sat together, and many of the three younger classes with them, at the table of the Lord. That class of 1802 was the first of all the classes whose education within those venerable walls has been attended with so great a blessing.

One of those whom that reviving of religion introduced to membership in the college church was PELATIAH PERIT. He had entered college an amiable and dutiful boy, ingenuous, tractable, genial, and of peaceful manners, but with no fixed and earnest purpose to live for God and for eternity; just one of those beloved and hopeful boys who are so often ruined by the temptations of a college life because of their amiable and attractive qualities. He graduated at the early age of seventeen, not only unharmed by the temptations through which he had passed, but inspired with the principles that form the highest and noblest type of manhood. He bad considered and settled the question whether to live for himself or to live for God, and thenceforth his long life was a testimony to the earnestness of his desire.

We see something of his character in the fact that immediately after leaving college at that early age, he established in Norwich, his native place, a school for young gentlemen and ladies which gave him a temporary employment, and in which he was entirely successful. At that time he was expecting to spend his life in the ministry of the gospel. But a partial failure of his health, and especially of his voice, required a reconsideration of his purpose. Compelled to relinquish the profession to which he was led by religious sympathies and aspirations, he chose the mercantile profession as better for him than any other secular employment.

It was not difficult for him to find an eligible situation in the city where he had passed they ears of his childhood, and where the stock of which he came was favorably known. He was in his nineteenth year when he began as a clerk in one of the large importing houses at Philadelphia, which had not then ceased to be the foremost of our American cities. Nor was he long in demonstrating that all his talents and attainments might be made serviceable to him in his chosen employment. After remaining about five years in connection with the house which he had entered as a clerk, and for which he had made several voyages to the West Indies and to South America, he removed to New York in 1809, just when all the commercial interests of our country were imperilled, and were coming to the brink of annihilation, by that series of measures which terminated in the war with great Britain. How he forced through those years of disaster and uncertainty I am not informed. Let it suffice to say that when peace had been restored, and the business of the country was reviving, and its foreign commerce was beginning again to traverse freely every ocean, he became a partner in the house of GOODHUE & Co., now so widely known, and that, through all the changes which time and death made in the partnership, he remained a member of that firm more than forty years.. All commercial men know the character and standing of that house, and how much of it was the character and standing of PELATIAH PERIT.

His place among the merchants of our great commercial city, was recognized by his election, eleven years ago, to the Presidency of the New York Chamber of Commerce. The rules of that body provide that no