MEMOIR OF PEIESTLEY. 151 



a favorite occupatiou, and his pupils still revere his memory with 

 filial tenderness, many of them with genuine enthusiasm. 



But no consideration could induce him to pause when he thought 

 there was some truth to be defended, and this trait of character, so 

 admirable in itself, destroyed the effect of more amiable qualities and 

 constituted the torment of his life; because he carried it to exaggera- 

 tion, and because he forgot that reasoning is the least of the means 

 which must be used to make men adopt opinions which conflict with 

 their habits of thought or temporary interests. 



The insults heaped upon him, and the fear of again compromising 

 the lives and fortunes of his friends, at last made a sojourn in his own 

 country intolerable. In his new engagements at Hackney, industry 

 and patience might repair, as they had already in part repaired, the 

 disasters of Birmingham ; but this consideration was not sufficient to 

 detain him ; and as coming to France during the war would have 

 given countenance to the charges of his enemies, he could see no 

 chance of repose except in the United States of America. Yet was it 

 some time before he found it even there ; English j^rejudices followed 

 him beyond the seas, and not until the accession of Jefferson to the 

 Presidency was he free from the apprehension of being obliged to quit 

 that asylum. 



The dedication of his Ecclesiastical History to that great magistrate, 

 in acknowledgment of the tranquillity restored to him, and the reply 

 of Jefferson, afford a noble specimen of the relations which may sub- 

 sist between men of letters and men in place without humiliation to 

 either. 



Priestley proposed to consecrate the rest of his life to the work just 

 mentioned, in which he intended to comprise the development and 

 proofs of all his theological opinions ; but he was arrested at the fourth 

 volume by a fatal accident. His food^ by some unknown means, 

 proved one day to have been poisoned ;* his whole family was placed 

 in jeopardy, and his own health languished from that time forward. 

 A gradual decay terminated liis life after three years of suffering. He 

 died at Northumberland, in Pennsylvania, February G, 1804. 



His last moments were marked by the effusions of the same piety 

 which had animated him through life, and which, from not being well 

 regulated, liad occasioned all its errors. He caused the Gospels to be 

 read to him, and thanked God for having granted him a useful life 

 and peaceful death. Among his chief blessings he ranked that of 

 having personally known all his celebrated cotemporaries. "I am 

 going to sleep like you," he said to his grandchildren, who were 

 brought to his bedside; "but we shall all awake together," he added, 

 looking towards the attendants, "and I trust to everlasting happi- 

 ness." These were his latest words, and they bear witness to the 

 belief in which he died. 



Such was the end of a man whom his enemies accused of wishing to 

 subvert all religion and morals ; but whose chief fault was to have 

 misconceived his vocation, and to have attached too much importance 



« The statement made here, as well as in some other works, of the poisoning whicli 

 occasioned the decline and death of Dr. Priestley rests on little or no authority. — Translator. 



