148 MEMOIR OF PRIESTLEY. 



silence, for the eloges of the Academy are historic, and, as was ex- 

 pressly prescribed by the first and most illustrious of our predeces- 

 sors, are bound on every occasion to a fair exposition of the pro and 

 con. Nor can it be otherwise than useful to observe, as in the present 

 example, to what lengths the finest genius may be misled when it 

 attempts to overleap the limits which Providence has prescribed to 

 our understanding. There is even more instruction in the errors of 

 such a man as Priestley than in his actual misfortunes ; for where is 

 the generous mind that would not suffer even greater misfortunes 

 than his if it were only sure of having announced truth and vindi- 

 cated right? 



Yet it was not precisely the theology of Priestley which occasioned 

 his misfortunes ; in England every one dogmatises as he pleases. It 

 was his politics, too closely allied to that theology ; the politics of 

 dissenters being in almost every case the politics of opposition. 



We have been accustomed, in France, to consider protestants ns 

 republicans from religion ; they are only so from oppression. In 

 Ireland it is the catholics who pass for republicans, while the protest- 

 ants, who rule, are royalists, because the king is of their party. 

 This natural opposition is more vehement in England than else- 

 where, precisely because there dissenters are tolerated by halves, and 

 only by halves. Excluded from honors and employment, they are 

 constrained to the rigid payment of tithes for a ibrm of worship 

 which is not their own. Their children are not even admitted into 

 the national universities, and yet, influential both from their numbers 

 and wealth, they are left at full liberty to assemble, to debate, to 

 print — to exercise, in fact, every means of inflaming their resentments. 



For thirty years Priestley was the most eloquent, bold, and perse- 

 vering organ of their grievances. He put forth twenty volumes in 

 this service. In this service solely did he write against the celebrated 

 treatise in which Burke predicted in so true and startling a manner 

 the evils which must flow from the French revolution. Apparently 

 the object of Priestley's reply was not well understood in France, for 

 he owed to this his nomination as French citizen and member of the 

 convention, two titles which, at that time, seemed to sit but ill on so 

 warm a defender of revelation and universal toleration. The first he 

 did not decline, but the exercise of the second was evaded on the plea 

 that he did not sufficiently understand the French language. 



Without pronouncing as to the substance, it must be conceded that 

 the political writings of Priestley unite a rare moderation in terms to 

 a consistency of principle not less rare. He asks nothing for dissenters 

 which he does not equally ask for catholics, and with more urgency 

 for the latter as the greater sufferers. No catholic has more vividly 

 painted the oppression under which nine- tenths of the Irish people 

 labor. 



I know not what gratitude the catholics may have evinced for 

 these efforts of a unitarian in their behalf, but this extension of his 

 good will had no tendency, we may well conceive, to reconcile him 

 with the Anglican party. To the high churchmen he had become by 

 these means the object of a concentrated hostility ; those who wrote 



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