Priestley in America | Page 5

science which produced it, produce another powder which, inflamed under a certain compression, might impell the air, so as to shake down the strongest towers and scatter destruction.
But you are going to a country where science is turned to better uses. Your change of place will give room for the matchless activity of your genius; and you will take a sublime pleasure in bestowing on Britain the benefit of your future discoveries. As matter changes its form but not a particle is ever lost, so the principles of virtuous minds are equally imperishable; and your change of situation may even render truth more operative, knowledge more productive, and in the event, liberty itself more universal. Wafted by the winds or tossed by the waves, the seed that is here thrown out as dead, there shoots up and flourishes. It is probable that emigration to America from the first settlement downward, has not only served the cause of general liberty, but will eventually and circuitously serve it even in Britain. What mighty events have arisen from that germ which might once have been supposed to be lost forever in the woods of America, but thrown upon the bosom of Nature, the breath of God revived it, and the world hath gathered its fruits. Even Ireland has contributed her share to the liberties of America; and while purblind statesmen were happy to get rid of the stubborn Presbyterians of the North, they little thought that they were serving a good cause in another quarter.--Yes! the Volunteers of Ireland still live--they live across the Atlantic. Let this idea animate us in our sufferings, and may the pure principles and genuine lustre of the British Constitution reflected from their Coast, penetrate into ourselves and our dungeons.
Farewell--great and good man! Great by your mental powers, by your multiplied literary labours, but still greater by those household virtues which form the only solid security for public conduct by those mild and gentle qualities, which far from being averse to, are most frequently attended with severe and inflexible patriotism, rising like an oak above a modest mansion.--Farewell--but before you go, we beseech a portion of your parting prayer to the author of Good for Archibald Hamilton Rowan, the pupil of Jebb, our Brother, now suffering imprisonment, and for all those who have suffered, and are about to suffer in the same cause--the cause of impartial and adequate representation--the cause of the Constitution. Pray to the best of Beings for Muir, Palmer, Skirving, Margarott and Gerald, who are now, or will shortly be crossing, like you, the bleak Ocean, to a barbarous land!--Pray that they may be animated with the same spirit, which in the days of their fathers, triumphed at the stake, and shone in the midst of flames. Melancholy indeed, it is that the mildest and most humane of all Religions should have been so perverted as to hang or burn men in order to keep them of one faith.
It is equally melancholy, that the most deservedly extolled of Civil Constitutions, should recur to similar modes of coercion, and that hanging and burning are not now employed, principally, because measures apparently milder are considered as more effectual. Farewell! Soon may you embrace your sons on the American shore, and Washington take you by the hand, and the shade of Franklin look down with calm delight on the first statesman of the age extending his protection to its first philosopher.
And how interestedly did America anticipate the arrival of the world renowned philosopher is in a measure foreshadowed by the following excerpt from the American Daily Advertiser for Thursday, June 5, 1794:
Dr. Priestley, with about one hundred other passengers, are on board the Sansom, which may be hourly expected.
In an editorial of the same paper, printed about the same date, there appeared the following tribute:
It must afford the most sincere gratification to every well wisher to the rights of man, that the United States of America, the land of freedom and independence, has become the asylum of the greatest characters of the present age, who have been persecuted in Europe, merely because they have defended the rights of the enslaved nations.
The name of Joseph Priestley will be long remembered among all enlightened people; and there is no doubt that England will one day regret her ungrateful treatment to this venerable and illustrious man. His persecutions in England have presented to him the American Republic as a safe and honourable retreat in his declining years; and his arrival in this City calls upon us to testify our respect and esteem for a man whose whole life has been devoted to the sacred duty of diffusing knowledge and happiness among nations.
The citizens of united America know well the honourable distinction that is due to virtue and talents; and while they