PRIESTLEY. 87 



previous to the general election. He answered Mr. 

 Burke's ' Reflections on the French Revolution.' He 

 mixed in the question of the Catholic claims $ and he 

 published in all no less than eleven political works, 

 almost every one upon the topics of the day. It is 

 equally true, however, that theological controversy 

 occupied him far more constantly and engaged his 

 mind far more deeply than political matters ; that he 

 was regularly a theologian and incidentally a partisan. 



The cast of his political opinions had originally 

 little more tendency to democracy than those of Whigs 

 who have read and discussed more than they have 

 reflected and seen. He used, indeed, to say that in 

 politics he was a Trinitarian, though a Unitarian in 

 religion. It must, however, be confessed that he went 

 very much further in the same direction after the 

 French Revolution had set fire to the four quarters of 

 the political world, and his admiration of republican 

 principles might be measured by his zeal for the 

 innovators of France, with the success of whose arms 

 he deemed the safety of freedom to be bound up. 

 When we read his answer to the offer of a seat in 1792, 

 and reflect that it was penned about three weeks after 

 the horrible massacres of September, the worst of the 

 atrocities which disfigured the Revolution, it moves 

 our wonder to find a Christian minister accompanying 

 his acknowledgment of the honour proposed, that of 

 being enrolled among the authors of the tragedy so 

 recently enacted, with no protest against the bloody 

 course then pursuing, no exception to the unqualified 

 admiration expressed of the youthful republic. ^ 



In America we find his leanings are all against the 

 Federal party, and his censures of the great Chief of 

 the Union little concealed. He felt for the democratic 

 party, the French alliance, the enemies of English 

 partialities, and he regarded Washington as ungrateful 

 because he would not, from a recollection of the ser- 

 vices of France twenty years before to American in- 



