Fisher Ames, an American orator, statesman, and political writer, born in Dedham, Mass., April 9, 1758, died there, July 4, 1808. His father, who was a physician, died when the son was but 6 years old, but his loss was in some degree supplied by the energy and good sense of his widow. Fisher graduated at Harvard college at the age of 16. His youth, the disturbed state of public affairs, and the narrowness of the family means, delayed for several years his entrance into the profession of the law. During this interval, however, he was busily educating himself by the study of the Latin and English classics. In 1781 he was admitted to the bar, and began practice in his native town. But it was his political essays in the Boston newspapers, under the signatures of Brutus and Camillus, that first made his abilities generally known. When their authorship was discovered, he entered into private and political intimacy with the leading men of his own state and elsewhere, who were afterward the prominent federalists of the Washington school. He was a member of the Massachusetts convention assembled in 1788 for ratifying the federal constitution, and made himself conspicuous by the zeal and eloquence with which he recommended its adoption.

When the federal government went into operation, Mr. Ames was elected the first representative of his district, which then included Boston, in congress, and kept his seat during the eight years of Washington's administration. His readiness in debate and the splendor of his set speeches place him in the very first rank of parliamentary orators. At the close of his speech advocating the appropriation required for the execution of Jay's treaty with Great Britain, a member of the opposite party moved an adjournment, on the ground that the house was not in a state of mind to dwell calmly on the question when fresh from the excitement of its eloquence. At the close of his fourth term Mr. Ames left congress and returned to his profession. His interest in public affairs at that most excited period was manifested by fresh essays in the newspapers; but he took no immediate part in politics and accepted no office, excepting that of executive councillor under the administration of Governor Sumner. On the death of Washington he pronounced his eulogy before the legislature of Massachusetts. The gradual failure of his health compelled him soon to withdraw from the active practice of his profession, and he spent the last years of his life in philosophic retirement.

He was married in 1702 to Frances, daughter of John Worthington of Springfield, and in the occupations of domestic life, the superintendence of his farm and orchards, the study of literature, and the society of a brilliant circle of friends, his life wore away peacefully and happily. The chief drawback to his satisfaction was found in the gloomy forebodings as to the future of his country and the success of the experiment of republican government, which he felt in common with most of his school of politics. His works were collected and published in one volume soon after his death, with a memoir written by the Rev. John Thornton Kirkland. An enlarged edition, in two volumes, appeared in 1854, edited by his son, Mr. Seth Ames, of Cambridge, Mass. The first volume of this edition is composed of his letters, and they add to his former reputation that of one of the liveliest, wittiest, and most graceful of letter-writers. His orations, essays, and letters are of the highest excellence in their several departments, although the exuberance of his imagination, displayed in the multitude and splendor of his metaphors and illustrations, is sometimes perhaps a little excessive, notwithstanding their felicity and appositeness.

His appearance was attractive, his manners gentle and prepossessing, the play of his wit and imagination brilliant and incessant. Many of his bons mots have passed into proverbs.