Priestley in America | Page 5

of requisition, when the attention of a
whole scientific people is bent to multiplying the means and
instruments of destruction and when philosophy rises in a mass to drive
on the wedge of war. A black powder has changed the military art, and
in a great degree the manners of mankind. Why may not the same
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