V.] JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 121 



descendants of the people who taught their children 

 to cry "Damn Priestley ;" and, with that love for the 

 practical application of science which is the source of 

 the greatness of Birmingham, tried to set fire to the 

 doctor's house with sparks from his own electrical 

 machine ; thereby giving the man they called an 

 incendiary and raiser of sedition against Church and 

 King, an appropriately experimental illustration 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 indication of some inherent 

 incapacity for self-government among the French 

 people. I think, however, that Englishmen who 

 argue thus, forget that, from the meeting of the Long 

 Parliament in 1640, 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 

 ourselves 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 instru- 

 ment of government, and peculation its reward. 

 Four-fifths of the seats in the House of Commons 

 were more or less openly dealt with as property. A 



