134 JOSEPH PKEESTLEY. 



vast changes, I think there can be but one reply. They 

 mean that reason has asserted and exercised her primacy 

 over all provinces of human activity: that ecclesiastical 

 authority has been relegated to its proper place; that 

 the good of the governed has been finally recognised 

 as the end of government, and the complete responsibil- 

 ity of governors to the people as its means ; and that the 

 dependence of natural phenomena in general, on the laws 

 of action of what we call matter has become an axiom. 



But it was to bring these things about, and to en- 

 force the recognition of these truths, that Joseph Priest- 

 ley laboured. If the nineteenth century is other and 

 better than the eighteenth, it is, in great measure, to 

 him and to such men as he, that we owe the change. 

 If the twentieth century is to be better than the nine- 

 teenth, it will be because there are among us men who 

 walk in Priestley's footsteps. 



Such men are not those whom their own generation 

 delights to honour ; such men, in fact, rarely trouble 

 themselves about honour, but ask, in another spirit than 

 FalstafFs, "What is honour? "Who hath it? He that 

 died o' Wednesday." But whether Priestley's lot be 

 theirs, and a future generation, in justice and in grati- 

 tude, set up their statues ; or whether their names and 

 fame are blotted out from remembrance, their work will 

 live as long as time^endures. To all eternity, the sum 

 of truth and right will have been increased by their 

 means; to all eternity, falsehood and injustice will be 

 the weaker because they have lived. 



