424 PRIESTLEY. 



tician, though in declining the seat in the National 

 Convention he says* his studies had been little directed 

 towards legislation compared with theology and philo- 

 sophy; and denies in a letter to William Smith that 

 he ever taught or even mentioned politics to his pupils, 

 as he had been charged with doing, among the innu- 

 merable falsehoods of which he was the subject. Nor 

 is the circumstance of his not attending political meet- 

 ings at all decisive of his being little of a political agi- 

 tator, because his incurable stutter prevented him from 

 taking a part in such proceedings. But he wrote in 

 1774, at Franklin's request, an address to the people 

 on the American disputes, 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 con- 

 stantly 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 was originally 

 little more tending to democracy than those of Whigs 

 usually are 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 



* Mem., vol. i. part ii. p. 190198. 



