II JOSEPH PRIESTLEY A LECTURE DELIVERED IN THE HULME TOWN HALL, MANCHESTER, ON 18TH NOVEMBER 1874. MANCHESTER SCIENCE LECTURES. On. THOSE of you who read newspapers will, probably, not have forgotten that on the 1st of August of this present year (1874) a great gathering took place at Birmingham to do honour to Joseph Priestley, one of that band of scientific worthies which made the reign of George III. memorable in the annals of science. that day Professor Huxley (than whom no one is better qualified to appreciate the whole outcome of Priestley's life, or better able to set forth the singular force and beauty of his character) uncovered a statue which the friends of science and of liberal thought had raised to the memory of the philosopher. Birmingham, however, was not the only town in England, nor were Englishmen the only people, that did homage to the memory of Priestley on that day. The lovers of science in Leeds, near to which place he was born, assembled in public meeting; and the chemists of America, to which country he was driven by the political and theological bigotry of his own people, met together at his grave in a quiet little town on the banks of the Susquehanna river. My object this evening is to give you some account of the labours of this philosopher, whose services in the cause of truth, and whose sacrifices in the struggle for freedom of thought, were, seventy years after his death, thus gratefully recognised. But the very richness of my material is a source of embarrassment; for Priestley was a man of so many and such diverse acquirements— A man so various, that he seemed to be his energy and power of application were so great, the Some particulars of the life of this extraordinary man may be interesting to you. He was born in 1733, Ꭰ Of at Fieldhead, a hamlet of some half-dozen houses, about six miles from Leeds. The old home of the Priestleys was pulled down some years ago. It was described by one who pointed out its site to me, and who remembered it well, as a little house of three small rooms, built of stone and slated with flags. Jonas Priestley, the father, was a cloth-dresser by trade. the mother but little is known beyond that she was the daughter of a farmer living near Wakefield. She died when Priestley was only seven years old, and he was taken charge of by his aunt, a Mrs. Keighley, a pious and excellent woman, in a good position, but who, as he tells us, "knew no other use of wealth, or of talents of any kind, than to do good." The boy was of a weakly consumptive habit, one consequence of which was seen in the desultory character of his early education. But his home-life with his aunt must have done much to make up for the deficiencies of his school training. She encouraged him in his fondness for books, and as her house was the resort of all the dissenting clergymen in the district without distinction, young Priestley was constantly brought in contact with men of culture and of liberal thought, and several of them seem to have made a lasting impression on his vigorous mind. Still, the gloomy Calvinism under which he was brought up, and the frequent talk of experiences and of new births to which he listened, had its effect upon the sensitive mind in the weakly frame. Years afterwards he wrote of this period: "I felt occasionally such distress of mind as it is not in my power to describe, and which I still look back upon with horror. Notwithstanding I had nothing very material to reproach myself with, I often concluded that God had forsaken me, and that mine was like the case of Francis Spira, to whom, as he imagined, repentance and salvation were denied. In that state of mind I remember reading the account of the man in the iron cage in The Pilgrim's Progress with the greatest perturbation." But the strengthening intellect was not slow to recover its ascendency; and Priestley could afterwards write, in his characteristic way of always looking at the sunny side of every circumstance: "I even think it an advantage to me, and am truly thankful for it, that my health received the check that it did when I was young; since a muscular habit from high health, and strong spirits, are not, I think, in general accompanied with that sensibility of mind which is both favourable to piety and to speculative pursuits." Priestley was destined by his aunt for the ministry, but her views-which were his also-were for a time interfered with by his continued ill-health. Eventually he was sent to the Dissenting Academy at Daventry, which the labours of the good and learned Dr. Doddridge had brought into repute. Of the three years he spent there Priestley ever spoke with peculiar satisfaction. The system of study was congenial to his independent and inquisitive mind, for the freest inquiry on every article of theological orthodoxy and heresy was warmly encouraged, and every vexed question was in turn handled by the teachers, who took opposite sides in controversy, and incited their students to discussion. If training such as this laid the foundation of the successes of Priestley's after-life, it was also, and in no less degree, the source of much of his misfortune. His first charge, on leaving Daventry, was at Needham Market, in Suffolk; but his congregation did not like his Arianism, nor the stuttering way in which he told them of it, and they almost deserted him. Driven to extremities, he issued proposals to teach the classics and mathematics for half a guinea a quarter, and to board the pupils in his house for twelve guineas a year. This scheme not answering, he next turned his attention to popular science, and commenced with a course of twelve lectures on "The Use of the Globes," from which he barely got enough to pay for his globes. Although he keenly felt the effects of what he terms his "low despised situation," Priestley never lost heart or hope. He could even say of his impediment in speech, that, like St. Paul's "thorn in the flesh," it was not without its use. "Without some such check as this," he writes, "I might have been disputatious in company, or might have been seduced by the love of popular applause as a preacher; whereas my conversation and my delivery having nothing in them that was generally striking, I hope I have been more attentive to qualifications of a superior kind." Years afterwards, on being invited to preach in the district when he had raised himself to some degree of notice in the world, the same people crowded to hear him; and though his elocution was not much improved, they professed to admire one of the same discourses they had formerly despised. From Needham he passed on to Nantwich, in Cheshire, where he found himself in more congenial society, and in better circumstances, so that he was able to buy books and a few philosophical instruments. Not that philosophy here occupied the whole of his leisure, for he tells us that he betook himself to music, and learned to play on the English flute, as the easiest instrument. Music he recommends to all studious persons; and it will be better for them, he says, if, like himself, they should have no very fine ear or exquisite taste, as by this means they will be more easily pleased, |