Part 2

If, only, all the time of Dr. Priestley in Birmingham had been devoted to science, but alas, his "beloved theology" claimed much of it. He would enter into controversy--he would dissent, and the awful hour was advancing by leaps and bounds. The storm was approaching.

It burst forth with fury in 1791. The houses of worship, in which he was wont to officiate, were the first to meet destruction, then followed his own house in which were assembled his literary treasures and the apparatus he had constructed and gathered with pains, sacrifice and extreme effort. Its demolition filled his very soul with deepest sorrow. Close at hand, the writer has a neat little chemical balance. It was brought to this country by Priestley, and tradition has it, that it was among the pieces of the celebrated collection of chemical utensils rescued from the hands of the infuriated mob which sought even the life of Priestley, who fortunately had been spirited or hidden away by loyal, devoted friends and admirers. In time he ventured forth into the open and journeyed to London, and when quiet was completely restored, he returned to one of his early fields of activity, but wisdom and the calm judgment of friends decided this as unwise. Through it all Priestley was quiet and philosophical, which is evident from the following story:

A friend called on him soon after the riots and condoled with him for his loss in general, then mentioned the destruction of his books as an object of particular regret. Priestley answered, "I should have read my books to little purpose if they had not taught me to bear the loss of them with composure and resignation."

But the iron had entered his soul. He could not believe that in his own England any man would be treated as he had been treated. His country was dear to him. He prized it beyond expression, but he could not hope for the peace his heart craved. His family circle was broken, two of his sons having come to America, so in the end, deeply concerned for his life-companion's comfort, the decision to emigrate was reached, and their faces were turned to the West.

In reviewing the history of chemistry the remark is frequently heard that one blotch on the fair escutcheon of French science was placed there when the remorseless guillotine ushered Lavoisier into eternity. Was not the British escutcheon of science dimmed when Priestley passed into exile? Priestley--who had wrought so splendidly! And yet we should not be too severe, for an illustrious name--Count Rumford--which should have been ours--was lost to us by influences not wholly unlike those which gained us Priestley. Benjamin Thompson, early in life abandoned a home and a country which his fellow citizens had made intolerable.

Read Priestley's volumes on Air and on Natural Philosophy. They are classics. All conversant with their contents agree that the experimental work was marvelous. Priestley's discovery of oxygen was epoch-making, but does not represent all that he did. Twice he just escaped the discovery of nitrogen. One wonders how this occurred. He had it in hand. The other numerous observations made by him antedate his American life and need not be mentioned here. They alone would have given him a permanent and honorable rank in the history of chemistry. Students of the science should reserve judgment of Priestley until they have familiarized themselves with all his contributions, still accessible in early periodicals. When that has been done, the loss to English science, by Priestley's departure to another clime will be apparent.

His dearest friends would have held him with them. Not every man's hand was against him--on the contrary, numerous were those, even among the opponents of his political and theological utterances, who hoped that he would not desert them. They regretted that he had--

turned his attention too much from the luminous field of philosophic disquisition to the sterile regions of polemic divinity, and the still more thorny paths of polemic politics....

from which the hope was cherished that he would recede and devote all his might to philosophical pursuits.

A very considerable number ... of enlightened inhabitants, convinced of his integrity as a man, sincerity as a preacher, and superlative merit as 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. 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 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: