Robert Waln was born in Philadelphia on 22 February 1765. A merchant in the East India and China trade, he also served as a city councilman, state legislator (1794–98), U.S. representative (1798–1801), and president of the Philadelphia Insurance Company. The economic dislocations of the War of 1812 inspired Waln to open a New Jersey cotton mill and advocate protectionism. A Quaker, he gained notoriety with Seven Letters to Elias Hicks (1825), a critique of Hicks's heterodoxy.