Chapter 11

It was during these London visits that he renewed his acquaintance with Dr. Franklin. They were members of a club of 'philosophical gentlemen' which met at stated times at the London Coffee House, Ludgate Hill. There were few days upon which the Father of Pneumatic Chemistry and the Father of Electrical Science did not meet. When their talk was not of dephlogisticated air and like matters it was pretty certain to be political. The war between England and America was imminent. Franklin dreaded it. He often said to Priestley that 'if the difference should come to an open rupture, it would be a war of _ten years_, and he should not live to see the end of it.' He had no doubt as to the issue. 'The English may take all our great towns, but that will not give them possession of the country,' he used to say. Franklin's last day in England was given to Priestley. The two friends spent much of the time in reading American newspapers, especially accounts of the reception which the Boston Port Bill met with in America, and as Franklin read the addresses to the inhabitants of Boston, from the places in the neighborhood, 'the tears trickled down his cheeks.' He wrote to Priestley from Philadelphia just a month after the battle of Lexington, briefly describing that lively episode, and mentioning his pleasant six weeks voyage with weather 'so moderate that a London wherry might have accompanied us all the way.' At the close of his letter he says: 'In coming over I made a valuable philosophical discovery, which I shall communicate to you when I can get a little time. At present I am extremely hurried.' In October of that year, 1775, Franklin wrote to Priestley about the state of affairs in America. His letter contains one passage which can hardly be hackneyed from over-quotation. Franklin wants Priestley to tell 'our dear good friend,' Dr. Price, that America is 'determined and unanimous.' 'Britain at the expense of three millions has killed 150 yankees this campaign, which is 20,000 l. a head; and at Bunker's Hill, she gained a mile of ground, all of which she lost again, by our taking post on Ploughed Hill. During the same time 60,000 children have been born in America.' From these data Dr. Price is to calculate 'the time and expense necessary to kill us all, and conquer the whole of our territory.' Then the letter closes with greetings 'to the club of honest whigs at the London Coffee House.'

Seven years later Franklin's heart was still faithful to the club. He writes to Priestley from France: 'I love you as much as ever, and I love all the honest souls that meet at the London Coffee House.... I labor for peace with more earnestness that I may again be happy in your sweet society.' Franklin thought that war was folly. In a letter to Dr. Price, he speaks of the great improvements in natural philosophy, and then says: 'There is one improvement in moral philosophy which I wish to see: the discovery of a plan that would induce and oblige nations to settle their disputes without first cutting one another's throats.'

Priestley lamented that a man of Franklin's character and influence 'should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers.' Franklin acknowledged that he had not given much attention to the evidences of Christianity, and asked Priestley to recommend some 'treatises' on the subject 'but not of great length.' Priestley suggested certain chapters of Hartley's _Observations on Man_, and also what he himself had written on the subject in his _Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion_. Franklin had promised to read whatever books his friend might advise and give his 'sentiments on them.' 'But the American war breaking out soon after, I do not believe,' says Priestley, 'that he ever found himself sufficiently at leisure for the discussion.'

Priestley valued his own scientific reputation not a little for the weight it gave, among skeptics, to his arguments in support of his religious belief. He found that all the philosophers in Paris were unbelievers. They looked at him with mild astonishment when they learned that he was not of the same mind. They may even have thought him a phenomenon which required scientific investigation. 'As I chose on all occasions to appear as a Christian, I was told by some of them that I was the only person they had ever met with, of whose understanding they had any opinion, who professed to believe Christianity.' Priestley began to question them as to what they supposed Christianity was, and with the usual result,--they were not posted on the subject.

In 1780 Priestley went to Birmingham. In the summer of 1791 occurred that remarkable riot, perhaps the most dramatic event in the philosopher's not unpicturesque career. This storm had long been gathering, and when it broke, the principal victim of its anger was, I verily believe, more astonished than frightened. The Dissenters were making unusual efforts to have some of their civil disabilities removed. Feeling against them was especially bitter. In Birmingham this hostility was intensified by the public discourses of Mr. Madan, 'the most respectable clergyman of the town,' says Priestley. He published 'a very inflammatory sermon ... inveighing against the Dissenters in general, and myself in particular.' Priestley made a defense under the title of _Familiar Letters to the Inhabitants of Birmingham_. This produced a 'reply' from Madan, and 'other letters' from his opponent. Being a conspicuous representative of that body which was most 'obnoxious to the court' it is not surprising that Priestley should have been singled out for unwelcome honors. The feeling of intolerance was unusually strong. It was said--I don't know how truly--that at a confirmation in Birmingham tracts were distributed against Socinianism in general and Priestley in particular. Very reputable men thought they did God service in inflaming the minds of the rabble against this liberal-minded gentleman. Priestley's account of the riot in the Memoir is singularly temperate. It might even be called tame. He was quite incapable of posing, or of playing martyr to an audience of which a goodly part was sympathetic and ready to believe his sufferings as great as he chose to make them appear. One could forgive a slight outburst of indignation had the doctor chosen so to relieve himself. 'On occasion of the celebration of the anniversary of the French revolution, on July 14, 1791, by several of my friends, but with which I had little to do, a mob, encouraged by some persons in power, first burned the meeting-house in which I preached, then another meeting-house in the town, and then my dwelling-house, demolishing my library, apparatus, and as far as they could everything belonging to me.... Being in some personal danger on this occasion I went to London.'

A much livelier account from Priestley's own hand and written the next day after the riot is found in a letter to Theophilus Lindsay. 'The company were hardly gone from the inn before a drunken mob rushed into the house and broke all the windows. They then set fire to our meeting-house and it is burned to the ground. After that they gutted, and some say burned the old meeting. In the mean time some friends came to tell me that I and my house were threatened, and another brought a chaise to convey me and my wife away. I had not presence of mind to take even my MSS.; and after we were gone the mob came and demolished everything, household goods, library, and apparatus.' The letter differs from the Memoir in saying that 'happily no fire could be got.' Priestley afterwards heard that 'much pains was taken, but without effect, to get fire from my large electrical machine which stood in the Library.'

It is rather a curious fact that Priestley was not at the inn where the anniversary was celebrating. While the company there were chanting the praises of liberty he was at home playing backgammon with his wife, a remarkably innocent and untreasonable occupation. Mr. Arthur Young visited the scene of the riot a few days later and had thoughts upon it. 'Seeing, as I passed, a house in ruins, on inquiry I found that it was Dr. Priestley's. I alighted from my horse, and walked over the ruins of that laboratory which I had left home with the expectation of reaping instruction in; of that laboratory, the labours of which have not only illuminated mankind but enlarged the sphere of science itself; which has carried its master's fame to the remotest corner of the civilized world; and will now with equal celerity convey the infamy of its destruction to the disgrace of the age and the scandal of the British name.' It is not necessary to supplement Arthur Young's burst of indignation with private bursts of our own. We can afford to be as philosophic over the matter as Priestley was. That feeling was hot against him even in London is manifest from the fact that the day after his arrival a hand-bill was distributed beginning with the words: 'Dr. Priestley is a damned rascal, an enemy both to the religious and political constitution of this country, a fellow of a treasonable mind, consequently a bad Christian.' The 'bad Christian' thought it showed 'no small degree of courage' in Mr. William Vaughan to receive him into his house. 'But it showed more in Dr. Price's congregation at Hackney to invite me to succeed him.' The invitation was not unanimous, as Priestley with his characteristic passion for exactness is at pains to tell the reader. Some of the members withdrew, 'which was not undesirable.'

People generally looked askance at him. If he was upon one side of the street the respectable part of the world made it convenient to pass by on the other side. He even found his relations with his philosophical acquaintance 'much restricted.' 'Most of the members of the Royal Society shunned him,' he says. This seems amusing and unfortunate. Apparently one's qualifications as a scientist were of little avail if one happened to hold heterodox views on the Trinity, or were of opinion that more liberty than Englishmen then had would be good for them. Priestley resigned his fellowship in the Royal Society.

One does not need even mildly to anathematize the instigators of that historic riot. They were unquestionably zealous for what they believed to be the truth. Moreover, as William Hutton observed at the time, 'It's the right of every Englishman to walk in darkness if he chooses.' The method employed defeated its own end. Persecution is an unsafe investment and at best pays a low rate of interest. No dignified person can afford to indulge in it. There's the danger of being held up to the laughter of posterity. It has happened so many times that the unpopular cause has become popular. This ought to teach zealots to be cautious. What would Madan have thought if he could have been told that within thirty years one of his own coadjutors in this affair would have publicly expressed regret for the share he had in it? Madan has his reward, three quarters of a column in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. But to-day Priestley's statue stands in a public square of Birmingham opposite the Council House. Thus do matters get themselves readjusted in this very interesting world.

Rutt's Life of Priestley (that remarkable illustration of how to make a very poor book out of the best materials) contains a selection of the addresses and letters of condolence which were forthcoming at this time. Some of them are stilted and dull, but they are actual 'documents,' and the words in them are alive with the passion of that day. They make the transaction very real and close at hand.

Priestley was comparatively at ease in his new home. Yet he could not entirely escape punishment. There were 'a few personal insults from the lowest of the rabble.' Anxiety was felt lest he might again receive the attentions of a mob. He humorously remarked: 'On the 14th of July, 1792, it was taken for granted by many of my neighbors that my house was to come down just as at Birmingham the year before.' The house did not come down, but its occupant grew ill at ease, and within another two years he had found a new home in the new nation across the sea.

It is hardly exact to say that he was 'driven' from England, as some accounts of his life have it. Mere personal unpopularity would not have sufficed for this. But at sixty-one a man hasn't as much fight in him as at forty-five. He is not averse to quiet. Priestley's three sons were going to America because their father thought that they could not be 'placed' to advantage in a country so 'bigoted' as their native land was then. 'My own situation, if not hazardous, was become unpleasant, so that I thought my removal would be of more service to the cause of truth than my longer stay in England.'

The sons went first and laid the foundations of the home in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. The word 'Susquehanna' had a magic sound to Englishmen. On March 30, 1794, Priestley delivered his farewell discourse. April 6 he passed with his friends the Lindsays in Essex Street, and a day later went to Gravesend. For the details of the journey one must go to his correspondence.

His last letters were written from Deal and Falmouth, April 9 and 11. The vessel was six weeks in making the passage. The weather was bad and the travelers experienced everything 'but shipwreck and famine.' There was no lack of entertainment, for the ocean was fantastic and spectacular. Not alone were there the usual exhibitions of flying-fish, whales, porpoises, and sharks, but also 'mountains of ice larger than the captain had ever seen before,'--for thus early had transatlantic captains learned the art of pronouncing upon the exceptional character of a particular voyage for the benefit of the traveler who is making that voyage. They saw water-spouts, 'four at one time.' The billows were 'mountain-high, and at night appeared to be all on fire.' They had infinite leisure, and scarcely knew how to use it. Mrs. Priestley wrote 'thirty-two large pages of paper.' The doctor read 'the whole of the Greek Testament and the Hebrew Bible as far as the first book of Samuel.' He also read through Hartley's second volume, and 'for amusement several books of voyages and Ovid's Metamorphoses.' 'If I had [had] a Virgil I should have read him through, too. I read a great deal of Buchanan's poems, and some of Petrarch's _de remediis_, and Erasmus's Dialogues; also Peter Pindar's poems, ... which pleased me much more than I expected. He is Paine in verse.'

On June 1 the ship reached Sandy Hook. Three days later Dr. and Mrs. Priestley 'landed at the Battery in as private a manner as possible, and went immediately to Mrs. Loring's lodging-house close by.' The next morning the principal inhabitants of New York came to pay their respects and congratulations; among others Governor Clinton, Dr. Prevoost, bishop of New York; Mr. Osgood, late envoy to Great Britain; the heads of the college; most of the principal merchants, and many others; for an account of which amenities one must read Henry Wansey's _Excursion to the United States in the Summer of 1794_, published by Salisbury in 1796, a most amusing and delectable volume.

Priestley missed seeing Vice-president John Adams by one day. Adams had sailed for Boston on the third. But he left word that Boston was 'better calculated' for Priestley than any other part of America, and that 'he would find himself very well received if he should be inclined to settle there.'

Mrs. Priestley in a letter home says: 'Dr. P. is wonderfully pleased with everything, and indeed I think he has great reason from the attentions paid him.' The good people became almost frivolous with their dinner-parties, receptions, calls, and so forth. Then there were the usual addresses from the various organizations,--one from the Tammany Society, who described themselves as 'a numerous body of freemen, who associate to cultivate among them the love of liberty, and the enjoyment of the happy republican government under which they live.' There was an address from the 'Democratic Society,' one from the 'Associated Teachers in the City of New York,' one from the 'Republican Natives of Great Britain and Ireland,' one from the 'Medical Society.'

The pleasure was not unmixed. Dr. Priestley the theologian had a less cordial reception than Dr. Priestley the philosopher and martyr. The orthodox were considerably disturbed by his coming. 'Nobody asks me to preach, and I hear there is much jealousy and dread of me.' In Philadelphia at a Baptist meeting the minister bade his people beware, for 'a Priestley had entered the land.' But the heretic was very patient and earnest to do what he might for the cause of 'rational' Christianity. The widespread infidelity distressed him. He mentioned it as a thing to be wondered at that in America the lawyers were almost universally unbelievers. He lost no time in getting to work. On August 27, when he had been settled in Northumberland only a month, he wrote to a friend that he had just got Paine's _Age of Reason_, and thought to answer it. By September 14 he had done so. 'I have transcribed for the press my answer to Mr. Paine, whose work is the weakest and most absurd as well as most arrogant of anything I have yet seen.'

Priestley was fully conscious of the humor of his situation. He was trying to save the public, including lawyers, from the mentally debilitating effects of reading Paine's _Age of Reason_, while at the same time all the orthodox divines were warning their flocks of the danger consequent upon having anything to do with _him_.

Honors and rumors of honors came to him. He was talked of for the presidency of colleges yet to be founded, and was invited to professorships in colleges that actually were. He went occasionally to Philadelphia, a frightful journey from Northumberland in those days. Through his influence a Unitarian society was established. He gave public discourses, and there was considerable curiosity to see and hear so famous a man. 'I have the use of Mr. Winchester's pulpit every morning ... and yesterday preached my first sermon.' He was told that 'a great proportion of the members of Congress were present,' and we know that 'Mr. Vice-President Adams was a regular attendant.'

In company with his friend Mr. Russell, Priestley went to take tea with President Washington. They stayed two hours 'as in any private family,' and at leavetaking were invited 'to come at any time without ceremony.'

About a year later Priestley saw again Washington, who had finished his second term of office. 'I went to take leave of the late president. He seemed not to be in very good spirits. He invited me to Mt. Vernon, and said he thought he should hardly go from home twenty miles as long as he lived.'

Priestley was not to have the full measure of the rest which he coveted. He had left England to escape persecution, and persecution followed him. Cobbett, who had assailed him in a scurrilous pamphlet at the time of his emigration, continued his attacks. Priestley was objectionable because he was a friend of France. Moreover he had opinions about things, some of which he freely expressed,--a habit he had contracted so early in life as to render it hopeless that he should ever break himself of it. Cobbett's virulence was so great as to excite the astonishment of Mr. Adams, who said to Priestley, 'I wonder why the man abuses you;' when a hint from Adams, Priestley thought, would have prevented it all. But it was not easy to control William Cobbett. Adams may have thought that Cobbett was a being created for the express purpose of being let alone. There are such beings. Every one knows, or can guess, to what sort of animal Churton Collins compared Dean Swift, when the Dean was in certain moods. William Cobbett, too, had his moods.

Yet it is impossible to read Priestley's letters between 1798 and 1801 without indignation against those who preyed upon his peace of mind. He writes to Lindsay: 'It is nothing but a firm faith in a good Providence that is my support at present: but it is an effectual one.' His 'never failing resource' was the 'daily study of the Scriptures.' In moments of depression he loved to read the introduction to Hartley's second volume, those noble passages beginning: 'Whatever be our doubts, fears, or anxieties, whether selfish or social, whether for time or eternity, our only hope and refuge must be in the infinite power, knowledge and goodness of God.'

Priestley was indeed a remarkable man. His services to science were very great. He laid the foundations of notable structures which, however, other men were to rear. He might have been a greater man had he been less versatile. And yet his versatility was one source of his greatness. He clung to old-fashioned notions, defending the doctrine of 'philogiston' after it had been abandoned by nearly every other chemist of repute. For this he has been ridiculed. But he was not ridiculous, he was singularly open-minded. He knew that his reputation as a philosopher was under a cloud. 'Though all the world is at present against me, I see no reason to despair of the old system; and yet, _if I should see reason to change my opinion, I think I should rather feel a pride in making the most public acknowledgment of it_.' These are words which Professor Huxley might well have quoted in his beautiful address on Priestley delivered at Birmingham, for they are the perfect expression and symbol of the fair-minded man.

He was as modest as he was fair-minded. When it was proposed that he should accompany Captain Cook's expedition to the South Seas, and the arrangements were really completed, he was objected to because of his political and religious opinions. Dr. Reinhold Foster was appointed in his stead. He was a person 'far better qualified,' said Priestley. Again when he was invited to take the chair of Chemistry at Philadelphia he refused. This for several reasons, the chief of which was that he did not believe himself fitted for it. One would naturally suppose that the inventor of soda-water and the discoverer of oxygen would have been able to give lectures to young men on chemistry. But Priestley believed that he 'could not have acquitted himself in it to proper advantage.' 'Though I have made discoveries in some branches of chemistry, I never gave much attention to the common routine of it, and know but little of the common processes.'

Priestley still awaits a biographer. The two thick volumes compiled by Rutt more than sixty-three years ago have not been reprinted, nor are they likely to be. But a life so precious in its lessons should be recorded in just terms. It would be an inspiring book, and its title might well be 'The Story of a Man of Character.' Not the least of its virtues would consist in ample recognition of Joseph Priestley's unwavering confidence that all things were ordered for the best; and then of his piety, which prompted him to say, as he looked back upon his life: 'I am thankful to that good Providence which always took more care of me than ever I took of myself.'

CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT