Priestley in America | Page 4

a
philosopher, were his strenuous advocates and admirers.
But the die had been cast, and to America he sailed on April 8, 1794, in
the good ship Sansom, Capt. Smith, with a hundred others--his fellow
passengers. Whilst on the seas his great protagonist Lavoisier met his
death on the scaffold.
Such was the treatment bestowed upon the best of their citizens by two

nations which considered themselves as without exception the most
civilized and enlightened in the world!
It is quite natural to query how the grand old scientist busied himself on
this voyage of eight weeks and a day. The answer is found in his own
words:
I read the whole of the Greek Testament, and the Hebrew bible as far as
the first Book of Samuel: also Ovid's Metamorphoses, Buchanan's
poems, Erasmus' Dialogues, also Peter Pindar's poems, &c.... and to
amuse myself I tried the heat of the water at different depths, and made
other observations, which suggest various experiments, which I shall
prosecute whenever I get my apparatus at liberty.
The Doctor was quite sea-sick, and at times sad, but uplifted when his
eyes beheld the proofs of friendship among those he was leaving
behind. Thus he must have smiled benignantly on beholding the
elegant Silver Inkstand, with the following inscription, presented ... by
three young Gentlemen of the University of Cambridge:
"To Joseph Priestley, LL.D. &c. on his departure into Exile, from a few
members of the University of Cambridge, who regret that expression of
their Esteem should be occasioned by the ingratitude of their Country."
And, surely, he must have taken renewed courage on perusing the
valedictory message received from the Society of United Irishmen of
Dublin:
Sir,
SUFFER a Society which has been caluminated as devoid of all sense
of religion, law or morality, to sympathize with one whom calumny of
a similar kind is about to drive from his native land, a land which he
has adorned and enlightened in almost every branch of liberal literature,
and of useful philosophy. The emigration of Dr. Priestley will form a
striking historical fact, by which alone, future ages will learn to
estimate truly the temper of the present time. Your departure will not

only give evidence of the injury which philosophy and literature have
received in your person, but will prove the accumulation of petty
disquietudes, which has robbed your life of its zest and enjoyment, for,
at your age no one would willingly embark on such a voyage, and sure
we are, it was your wish and prayer to be buried in your native country,
which contains the dust of your old friends Saville, Price, Jebb, and
Fothergill. But be cheerful, dear Sir, you are going to a happier
world--the world of Washington and Franklin.
In idea, we accompany you. We stand near you while you are setting
sail. We watch your eyes that linger on the white cliffs and we hear the
patriarchal blessing which your soul pours out on the land of your
nativity, the aspiration that ascends to God for its peace, its freedom
and its prosperity. Again, do we participate in your feelings on first
beholding Nature in her noblest scenes and grandest features, on
finding man busied in rendering himself worthy of Nature, but more
than all, on contemplating with philosophic prescience the coming
period when those vast inland seas shall be shadowed with sails, when
the St. Lawrence and Mississippi, shall stretch forth their arms to
embrace the continent in a great circle of interior navigation: when the
Pacific Ocean shall pour into the Atlantic; when man will become more
precious than fine gold, and when his ambition will be to subdue the
elements, not to subjugate his fellow-creatures, to make fire, water,
earth and air obey his bidding, but to leave the poor ethereal mind as
the sole thing in Nature free and incoercible.
Happy indeed would it be were men in power to recollect this quality
of the human mind. Suffer us to give them an example from a science
of which you are a mighty master, that attempts to fix the element of
mind only increase its activity, and that to calculate what may be from
what has been is a very dangerous deceit.--Were all the saltpetre in
India monopolized, this would only make chemical researches more
ardent and successful. The chalky earths would be searched for it, and
nitre beds would be made in every cellar and every stable. Did not that
prove sufficient the genius of chemistry would find in a new salt a
substitute for nitre or a power superior to it.[3] It requires greater
genius than Mr. Pitt seems to possess, to know the wonderful resources

of the mind, when patriotism animates philosophy, and all the arts and
sciences are put under a state