bold sectarian, who was far from being disposed to grant that toleration to others which he claimed for himself and for his infinitesimal sect, and the rash and somewhat unscrupulous politician, they

and on the experiments and discoveries he made | and no Pope of Rome could have spoken more in it. When the world shall have forgotten the contemptuously of other churches or faiths than he wrote and habitually spoke of the Church of England, and of all sects or modifications of sects that differed from his own, which was in good part a sect of his own making, and of which he was, in very truth, the pontifex maximus. His disciples describe him as "the grand restorer of the ancient Unitarian system, maintained at the era of the Reformation by Socinus and other learned men of the Polish or Cracovian school," and as the vindicator of "the genuine, unadulterated doctrine of primitive Christianity." He regarded all civil establishments of Christianity, and all connections between church and state, as crying abuses and barriers to the propagation of truth-by which truth, to apply Horne Tooke's analysis of the word, he meant simply what he, Dr. Joseph Priestley, trowed. But at various periods of his life he had trowed or believed in very different manners, reversing the ordinary process, and believing less and less as he grew in years; and the great and rapid transitions in his own creed ought to have moderated his zeal in enforcing his present belief or conviction upon others. He had lately held a long and terrible controversy with Dr. Horsley, who had been pro

DR JOSEPH PRIESTLEY.-From a print by Holloway, after Artaud. voked by one of his many publications, and had

will remember with respect and admiration the experimentalist the chemist that unlocked some of the secrets of nature, and opened the way to great and important discoveries. In treating of a season that was fiery hot, and when all classes, or nearly all classes of politicians and writers seemed to lose the best of our national attributes, calmness and moderation, we would, with all our heart, endeavour to preserve the balance of the strictest impartiality, and we trust it is alien to our nature to carp at, or lightly to disparage a man of science and genius. But, after a perusal of some of his writings, polemical and political (few ever look into them now or know the spirit that is in them), we are forced to the conclusion that Priestley, even before this violent and exciting season, had proved himself a dogmatic controversialist, an intemperate disputant, and a man that would risk the peace of society for a dogma of his own, or for the insane purpose of enforcing the speculative opinions of his almost invisible minority upon the majority. Horace Walpole said of him that he wanted a Papal power; and the wit is scarcely too severe. In his controversy with Gibbon, the historian, who, whatever he was besides, was a good-natured person and a gentleman, Priestley conducted himself in a manner to disprove his claim to be either one or the other. In his polemical discussions, even with his friend Dr. Price, he was neither gentle nor charitable;

taken the field as a champion of the Established church, and with far more heat than was decorous, although assuredly Priestley had no right to reproach him on that account. In the month of January of the present year, 1791, Priestley declared to his friend Dr. Price, who, he says reproachfully, had meddled but little with the Established church, that he "had long since drawn the sword and thrown away the scabbard, and was very easy about the consequences."

This surely was not language becoming the apostle of primitive Christianity: this sentiment was even adverse to toleration, and the first principle and foundation of the gospel of Christ, teaching love unto all men, and even unto foes. It were magnanimous, it were wiser and better, for men to act otherwise; but in these matters, when a preacher and teacher of doctrines odious to the vast majority hoists the black flag and cries no quarter, he must expect at the very least some hard knocks. Priestley must have foreseen the consequences, though perhaps not their full extent, when he boasted that he was so easy about them. He had contrived before this, by expressing doubts concerning the immateriality of the sentient principle in man, to obtain the reputation of an unbeliever in revelation. Like Price,

1 Letter from Birmingham, dated January 27, 1791. Hartley's Observations on Man, published in 1775. Matters 2 This was by and through his "Introductory Dissertation" to were not much mended by his later publications. In 1782 be

gard for the English constitution, Priestley applauded all that was doing in France as supereminently just and wise, and, with very little periphrasis, recommended an imitation of those performances. Mankind, he said, were everywhere opening their eyes to the nature and uses of government, and consequently the whole of the Gothic feudal system, embracing matters both civil and ecclesiastical, was beginning to shake to its foundation, producing a tremor and a convulsion that must be felt in every state in Europe. He attempted to repay with interest the sarcasms of Burke, but his periods had little of Burke's pungency. Many other things in the book would have inflamed the Birmingham mind, which was getting as hot as a furnace, against a man or writer not otherwise obnoxious; but, as coming from Priestley, who had incurred so long a score of grudges and spites, it roused all the angriest passions. He was told in anonymous letters to look to himself, as such an enemy to church and state, as such a deist or atheist would not long be tolerated in a town into which he had introduced nothing but dissension and discord.

he took the earliest opportunity of exulting in the French revolution, and he did not abate a jot of his admiration with the progress of the phenomenon. At a moment when the excitement was at the highest, he published his "Familiar Letters to the Inhabitants of Birmingham, in refutation of several Charges advanced against the Dissenters and Unitarians by the Rev. Mr. Madan," in which his ironical style gave great offence even to the populace, who were very loyal and very orthodox.' The personal popularity of George III. had kept on the increase throughout the kingdom; and, taking the great body of the people, there probably never was a time when England was in so high a royalist humour as at the beginning of the French revolution. Events and circumstances, not unassisted by exertions purposely made, gave somewhat of fanaticism to this feeling; but, after all, the feeling was as pure and quite as rational as the contemporary fanaticism of liberty and equality. Long before the excitement of politics was superadded to the excitement of religious controversy, Priestley had become exceedingly obnoxious to the Birmingham people. The French Academy of Sciences In this state of feeling in Birmingham, a cerhad paid a very proper compliment to the scien- tain number of Priestley's friends resolved to tific merits of Priestley in electing him an hono- celebrate with a dinner and toasts, speeches and rary member of their body; and he maintained songs, the 14th of July, the anniversary of the a correspondence with several of those men of taking of the Bastille. A few days before this science and literature who had put themselves appointed feast a printed hand-bill was circulated foremost in the revolution, and who were labour- through the town, to act like a challenge and deing to bring about a republic without that titular fiance to the hot church-and-king citizens and king which as yet they retained. Other incen in-dwellers. It bore no signature, and was adtives, besides his own strong political sympathies, dressed to the people at large. It was as folwere not wanting to set the ready pen of Priestley lows:-"My countrymen, the second year of agoing against the Reflections. Besides some Gallic liberty is nearly expired. At the comstrong things said in parliament against Price, mencement of the third, on the 14th of this Kippis, Towers, and other dissenting ministers, month, it is devoutly to be wished that every including Priestley himself, who had made such enemy to civil and religious despotism would use of "the pulpit, drum ecclesiastic," Burke had give his sanction to the majestic common cause fallen upon old Price in his book, and had given by a public celebration of the anniversary. Rehim a terrible mauling—such a mauling, indeed, member that on the 14th of July, the Bastille, that Price, happening to die soon after the ap- that 'high altar and castle of despotism,' fell! pearance of the Reflections, was said to have been Remember the enthusiasm peculiar to the cause killed by it, although his fourscore years seemed of liberty with which it was attacked! Rememto make death a very possible accident, without ber that generous humanity that taught the opattributing it to mere pen and ink. Before the pressed, groaning under the weight of insulted murderous book had been long in existence, rights, to save the lives of oppressors! ExtinPriestley put forth his "Letters to the Right Hon-guish the mean prejudices of nations, and let ourable Mr. Burke, on his Reflections on the Revolution in France." Though professing a re

had produced his History of the Corruptions of Christianity, in

which he had treated all churches as congeries of selfishness and iniquity. The Dutch took the book so much to heart, that in the city of Dort they caused it to be burned by the hands of the common hangman.

In these Familiar Letters, Priestley, assuming the prophetic

tone, announced the speedy triumph and establishment of Unitarianism which the inhabitants of Birmingham considered as something almost synonymous with atheism.

your numbers be collected and sent as a free-will offering to the national assembly. But is it possible to forget that your own parliament is venal? your ministers hypocritical? your clergy legal oppressors? the reigning family extravagant? the crown of a certain great personage becoming it?-too weighty for the people who gave it? every day too weighty for the head that wears your taxes partial and excessive? your representation a cruel insult upon the sacred rights of

and on the experiments and discoveries he made | and no Pope of Rome
in it. When the world shall have forgotten the contemptuously of ot
bold sectarian, who was far from being disposed he wrote and habit
to grant that toleration to others which he claimed England, and of
for himself and for his infinitesimal sect, and the that differed fr
rash and somewhat unscrupulous politician, they part a sect of
was, in ver
disciples
the an

era c

lea

a'

hey had taken

rty, who, great ad no notion of their vengeance, obets and halters,

a black list of coneen in Warwick for

the advantage of the ne rioters had in their trength of public opinud many witnesses who, iginal motive of their conduct loyal one, were probably not ous as to what they swore, in order them and get them off. It could alse ved, upon better evidence, that several of se rioters had previously been inoffensive, well-conducted men, and that they had only bee excited by their own inward belief that Priestley re- and his friends were sworn enemies to the king and church. Besides all this, there was the favourable confusion of great numbers, the contradictory evidence of the illiterate witnesses for the prosecution, and the common flaws in indictments, when drawn up, as these had been, in 1 hurry, and upon loose testimony. And, after all, it is a difficult and odious and agonizing task to select out of so great a number a few men fer examples. Previously to, and even during the trial, when a reaction of sympathy might har been expected, the sufferers from the riots a their witnesses were publicly abused and threa ened in the streets of Birmingham and Warwic where-as in many other places—the favourite toast of the church-and-king party was-"May

cited state
gham rioters
me on. As the
ners had not long
who were tried at the
the 22d of August,
wear Birmingham, only
of those tried at the
But
the 25th, four received sen-
who had suffered in their
who sympathized so deeply
intained that there ought to
d many more convictions; that
or at least that the jury was

taken some of the sturdy parti- supper!" Although, including the man convicted among the high-church party. every revolutionary dinner be followed by a lot side, we really believe-so in- at Worcester, five rioters were sentenced to death both parties-that they would have only three were hanged, the other two receiving the jury-box, and would never have his majesty's free pardon.

Ks on the church threaten to produce a civil nemies-Establishment of the Société Fraternelle sued by the national assembly against the clergyhe church and the popular infidelity-Marat and his uelled by La Fayette-Treatment of the royalists who poses-His account of the proceeding--Marat's counter-stateis"-Cause of the title-Character of Mirabeau-His indecisive illness and death-His unfitness to arrest the career of revolution riests in the Tuileries-He resolves to keep Easter at St. Cloud-A by the mob to remain in the Tuileries-Contradictory accounts of the e national assembly of the insult-Unsatisfactory answer of the president ne the command of the national guard-Attacks against him by the Cordeliers udhomme for the abolition of royalty-Changes in the names of the streets of of the Cordeliers-The Jacobins establish their Journal des Débats-The king and ight-His hopes of a restoration by a coalition of European sovereigns-The King of t Fersen to aid the escape of Louis-The Emperor of Austria's preparations to reinstate cape of Louis XVI. and his family-The proclamation he leaves behind him at his departure he injuries he had endured-Proceedings in the Parisian clubs at the king's flight-La Fayette in the Jacobin club as a traitor to the people-The king arrested at Varennes and brought back to is rough reception at his return-Effects of anguish upon the queen-The Marquis de Bouillé's tening letter to the national assembly.

R

EVERTING once more to the lead- | the history of our Charles I., he may have thought ing subject, we turn to the start- of acting with the Church of France, as that ling events in France-or to the prince had done in his last days by the Anglican aurora of French liberty. It was church. But Louis had none of the boldness of soon seen that the courage of the Charles I.; and even on this point, where his majority of the clergy had not been feelings and principles were perhaps stronger over-rated by Maury, and that the forcible exact- than upon any other, he was incapable of any ing of the serment civique would lead to a civil war, steadiness of purpose. He was not born to be a at least in a part of France. Before matters had voluntary martyr. Day after day the majority come to this extremity with the clergy, Louis of the assembly were thrown into transports of XVI., as a really scrupulous Catholic, had written rage by the reception of protests against the civil to Rome for the opinion and advice of Pius VI. constitution of the clergy, and by the positive The pope's opinion was opposed to the plans and refusal of some prelates, curés, and other priests determinations of the assembly, and therefore to take the serment civique. This hardihood was the liberal Archbishop of Vienne, minister for attributed to the obstinacy of the king. To extort ecclesiastical affairs, and the equally liberal Arch- compliance through terror, the Paris patriots bishop of Bordeaux, keeper of the seals, into made an émeute, and a terrible uproar, under the whose hands it fell, had kept it for a long time windows of the apartment of the poor weak prifrom the knowledge of the king. But neither soner of the Tuileries, who then gave his assent. the strong opinion of the pontiff of the Catholic world, nor the sentiments of the French hierarchy, among whom were many individuals that he revered, could be permanently kept from the knowledge of Louis; and his own firm conviction gave him courage to withhold for some time the royal assent to the civil constitution of the clergy, and to the forced serment civique, which was a part of it. At one time he is even said to have declared that he would rather die than be a party to the destruction of the established church; and, as he studied very attentively

On the 24th of January, the Jacobins of Paris had bound themselves by an oath to defend with their fortunes and their blood every citizen who should have the courage to devote himself to the denunciation of traitors to the country, by which they understood all men that entertained different opinions from their own. The decree to this effect for the Jacobins made decrees like the assembly-was unanimously adopted, as was also the resolution that copies of it should be sent to the affiliated societies in all parts of France, in order that they might bind themselves