Priestley in America | Page 7

Sir,
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 and who for several years have been
known in this city, by the name of the Tammany Society have deputed
us a Committee to express to you their pleasure and congratulations on
your safe arrival in this country.
Their venerable ancestors escaped, as you have done, from persecutions
of intolerance, bigotry and despotism, and they would deem themselves,
an unworthy progeny were they not highly interested in your safety and

happiness.
It is not alone because your various useful publications evince a life
devoted to literature and the industrious pursuit of knowledge; not only
because your numerous discoveries in Nature are so efficient to the
progression of human happiness: but they have long known you to be
the friend of mankind and in defiance of calumny and malice, an
asserter of the rights of conscience and the champion of civil and
religious liberty.
They have learned with regret and indignation the abandoned
proceedings of those spoilers who destroyed your house and goods,
ruined your philosophical apparatus and library, committed to the
flames your manuscripts, pryed into the secrets of your private papers,
and in their barbarian fury put your life itself in danger. They heard you
also with exalted benevolence return unto them "blessings for curses:"
and while you thus exemplified the undaunted integrity of the patriot,
the mild and forbearing virtues of the Christian, they hailed you victor
in this magnanimous triumph over your enemies.
You have fled from the rude arm of violence, from the flames of
bigotry, from the rod of lawless power: and you shall find refuge in the
bosom of freedom, of peace, and of Americans.
You have left your native land, a country doubtless ever dear to you--a
country for whose improvement in virtue and knowledge you have long
disinterestedly laboured, for which its rewards are ingratitude, injustice
and banishment. A country although now presenting a prospect
frightful to the eyes of humanity, yet once the nurse of science, of arts,
of heroes, and of freeman--a country which although at present
apparently self devoted to destruction, we fondly hope may yet tread
back the steps of infamy and ruin, and once more rise conspicuous
among the free nations of the earth. In this advanced period of your life,
when nature demands the sweets of tranquility, you have been
constrained to encounter the tempestous deep, to risk disappointed
prospects in a foreign land, to give up the satisfaction of domestic quiet,
to tear yourself from the friends of your youth, from a numerous
acquaintance who revere and love you, and will long deplore your loss.

We enter, Sir, with emotion and sympathy into the numerous sacrifices
you must have made, to an undertaking which so eminently exhibits
our country as an asylum for the persecuted and oppressed, and into
those regretful sensibilities your heart experienced when the shores of
your native land were lessening to your view.
Alive to the impressions of this occasion we give you a warm and
hearty welcome into these United States. We trust a country worthy of
you; where Providence has unfolded a scene as new as it is august, as
felicitating as it is unexampled. The enjoyment of liberty with but one
disgraceful exception, pervades every class of citizens. A catholic and
sincere spirit of toleration regulates society which rises into zeal when
the sacred rights of humanity are invaded. And there exists a sentiment
of free and candid inquiry which disdains shackles of tradition,
promising a rich harvest of improvement and the glorious triumphs of
truth. We hope, Sir, that the Great Being whose laws and works you
have made the study of your life, will smile upon and bless you--restore
you to every domestic and philosophical enjoyment, prosper you in
every undertaking, beneficial to mankind, render you, as you have been
to your own, the ornament of this country, and crown you at last with
immortal felicity and honour.
And to this the venerable scientist was pleased to say:
Gentlemen,
I think myself greatly honoured, flying as I do, from ill treatment in my
native country, on account of my attachment to the cause of civil and
religious liberty, to be received with the congratulations of "a Society
of Freemen associated to cultivate the love of liberty, and the
enjoyment of a happy Republican government." Happy would our
venerable ancestors, as you justly call them, have been, to have found
America such a retreat for them as it is to me, when they were driven
hither; but happy has it proved to me, and happy will it be for the world,
that in the wise and benevolent order of Providence, abuses