I JOSEPH PRIESTLEY — 31 



machine; thereby giving the man they called an 

 incendiary and raiser of sedition against Church 

 and King, an appropriately experimental illustra- 

 tion of the nature of arson and riot. 



If I have succeeded in putting before you the 

 main features of Priestley's work, its value will 

 become apparent when we compare the condition 

 of the English nation, as he knew it, with its 

 present state. 



The fact that France has been for eighty-five 

 years trying, without much success, to right 

 herself after the great storm of the Eevolution, 

 is not unfrequently cited among us as an indi- 

 cation of some inherent incapacity for self- 

 government among the French people. 1 think, 

 however, that Englishmen who argue thus, forget 

 that, from the meeting of the Long Parliament in 

 1G40, to the last Stuart rebellion in 1745, is a 

 hundred and five years, and that, in the middle of 

 the last century, we had but just safely freed our- 

 selves from our Bourbons and all that they repre- 

 sented. The corruption of our state was as bad 

 as that of the Second Empire. Bribery was the 

 instrument of government, and peculation its re- 

 ward. Four-fifths of the seats in the House of 

 Commons were more or less openly dealt with 

 as property. A minister had to consider the 

 state of the vote market, and the sovereign 

 secured a sufficiency of " king's friends " by 



