Priestley marries--Is ordained--His Essay on Education--Lectures on
History and General Policy--His Chart of Biography--Becomes a Doctor
of Laws of the University of Edinburgh--His visits to London--Makes
the acquaintance of Dr Price, Canton and Benjamin Franklin--Writes the
_History of Electricity_--Is elected into the Royal Society.
Priestley's entrance into the Warrington community affected his career
in more ways than one. In the first place, the improvements in his
worldly prospects enabled him to marry; and in the second he was led to
turn his attention to Natural Philosophy, to which, as we have seen, he
was already predisposed. The selection of his wife and of his studies
influenced the subsequent course of his life profoundly. Why he should
have left the sprightly, witty "Nancy Aikin, with the blue and laughing
eyes," to be "carried off to Palgrave by that queer little man" whom she
had to "honour and obey" as a school-mistress, is one of those
inscrutable dispensations which the hymeneal god delights in. That they
were the best of friends and had pleasure in each other's society is
abundantly evident. Priestley warmly admired her genius: she confessed,
indeed, that he first encouraged her to try her 'prentice hand at
poetry. She was about eighteen when Priestley first appeared at
Warrington, and about ten years his junior, a girl of many personal
attractions and, as demonstrated by her writings, of great mental
ability and accomplishments. She had been carefully educated by her
father, had a considerable knowledge of modern literature, and was
fairly well-read in that of Greece and Rome. Her first volume of poems
was printed at Warrington in 1773 and ran through four editions in a
year. It was said of her that she roused the admiration of Fox and
Johnson, the envy of Rogers and Wordsworth, and the jealousy of
Goldsmith; Scott declared she made a poet of him; Brougham eulogised her
in the House of Lords, and Mrs Oliphant has paid her a beautiful tribute
in her _Literary History of England_.
Miss Lucy Aikin, in her edition of her aunt's collected works, gives a
charming description of her as she appeared in early womanhood:--
"She was at this time possessed of great beauty, distinct traces of
which she retained to the latest period of her life. Her person was
slender, her complexion exquisitely fair, with the bloom of perfect
health; her features were regular and elegant, and her dark blue eyes
beamed with the light of wit and fancy."
Not less charming is the testimony of Henry Crabb Robinson, who, in
1805, wrote:--
"Mrs Barbauld bore the remains of great personal beauty.[7] She had a
brilliant complexion, light hair, blue eyes, a small, elegant figure,
and her manners were very agreeable, with something of the generation
then departing.... Mrs Barbauld is so well known by her prose writings
that it is needless for me to attempt to characterise her here. Her
excellence lay in the soundness and acuteness of her understanding,
and in the perfection of her taste. In the estimation of Wordsworth
she was the first of our literary women, and he was not bribed to this
judgment by any especial congeniality of feeling or by concurrence in
speculative opinions. I may here relate an anecdote connecting her and
Wordsworth, though out of its proper time by many, many years; but it
is so good that it ought to be preserved from oblivion. It was after
her death that Lucy Aikin published Mrs Barbauld's collected works, of
which I gave a copy to Miss Wordsworth. Among the poems is a Stanza on
Life, written in extreme old age. It had delighted my sister, to whom
I had repeated it on her deathbed. It was long after I gave these
works to Miss Wordsworth that her brother said, 'Repeat me that Stanza
by Mrs Barbauld.' I did so. He made me repeat it again. And so he
learned it by heart. He was at the time walking in his sitting-room at
Rydal with his hands behind him, and I heard him mutter to himself, 'I
am not in the habit of grudging people their good things, but I wish I
had written those lines.'"[8]
Priestley's choice fell upon Mary Wilkinson, who was of about the same
age as Anna Letitia Aikin. She was the daughter of a well-to-do
ironmaster at Wrexham, with whose family he had become acquainted in
consequence of the youngest son, William, having been a pupil at his
school in Nantwich. He certainly had no reason to regret his choice,
whatever Mary Wilkinson might have felt at times in the "cloudy weather"
she was destined to go through. It is, of course, idle to speculate "on
what might have been if things had been otherwise." The world, at all
events, was the richer for the _Hymns in Prose_ and the _Early Lessons_,
on which Mr Rochemont Barbauld's young charges and many succeeding
generations of children were nurtured.
From a worldly point of view Priestley's marriage was not without its
advantages to him, immediate and prospective. Mary Wilkinson had all the
force of character, and much of the mental and intellectual ability of
her father and her brother John, both of whom had a considerable share
in the development of the iron industry in this country. Of them Miss
Meteyard, in her _Life of Wedgwood_, writes:--
"John Wilkinson and his father Isaac played no unimportant part in the
vast industrial movement of their time. Isaac invented and first
brought into action the steam-engine blast at his iron works near
Wrexham. John, at the same place, as also at Bradley Forge, in
Staffordshire, executed all the ponderous castings for the steam
engines required in the Cornish mines, as well as those for Boulton
and Watt when they first commenced business."
The father was ruined in one of the commercial crises of which the times
were fertile. Of the son we shall hear more as this history proceeds. He
was one of the truest and staunchest of the many true and staunch
friends Priestley possessed.[9]
Priestley was married in 1762, Mr Threlkeld, one of the students at the
academy, who subsequently became a well-known Presbyterian divine,
notable for his linguistic attainments and his extraordinary power of
memory, being his groomsman. Whatever might be Mr Threlkeld's faculty of
recollection it went wholly astray on this occasion, for he became so
absorbed in the study of a Welsh Bible he found beside him in the pew
that he became quite oblivious to the onerous duties of his office.
Of his marriage Priestley characteristically writes:--
"This proved a very suitable and happy connection, my wife being a
woman of an excellent understanding, much improved by reading, of
great fortitude and strength of mind, and of a temper in the highest
degree affectionate and generous; feeling strongly for others, and
little for herself. Also, greatly excelling in everything relating to
household affairs, she entirely relieved me of all concern of that
kind, which allowed me to give all my time to the prosecution of my
studies and the other duties of my station."
All accounts we have of Mary Wilkinson are to the same effect. Her
great-granddaughter, Madame Belloc, writes:--
"It is a tradition in the family that Mrs Priestley once sent her
famous husband to market with a large basket, and that he so acquitted
himself that she never sent him again! Mrs Priestley was extremely
intelligent and original. Lord Shelburne once found her sitting on the
top of a pair of steps, clad in a great apron, and vigorously pasting
on a new wallpaper. She received him with calm composure. There is a
good portrait of her as an elderly lady in a cap, curving her hand
round her ear to assist her hearing. She must have herself insisted
upon being painted in this unusual attitude. She looks like a person
of excellent understanding, whose mind has been much improved by
reading."
Before he committed himself to matrimony Priestley took another step
hardly less momentous.
What it was may be gleaned from the following extract of a letter dated
May 1, 1762, to Seddon, who was away at the time on one of his frequent
begging expeditions on behalf of the Academy:--
"I am seriously preparing for _ordination_. As all things in this
world are uncertain, I think it a point of prudence not to omit
anything that may possibly be of advantage to me, if ever it be my lot
to be obliged to have recourse to the ministry for the whole or any
part of my subsistence, particularly as I am going to have a dearer
and more important stake in this world than I have ever yet had in it.
I can sincerely say I never knew what it was to be anxious on my own
account, but I cannot help confessing I begin to feel a good deal on
the account of another person. The hazard of bringing a person into
difficulties which she cannot possibly have any idea or prospect of
affects me, at times, very sensibly."
The earliest known portrait of Priestley is of this period. It
represents him as a slender young man with sloping shoulders, with a
keen, intelligent eye and an expression not unlike that caught by Fuseli
at a later time; his long neck is swathed in the ample folds of a white
neck-cloth, and he wears a full-bottomed wig.[10] During Priestley's
residence at Warrington an artist was employed in making silhouettes of
the principal inhabitants. Many of these were published by Dr Kendrick
in his _Profiles of Warrington Worthies_. In that of Priestley the
features are delicate and almost feminine: the full-bottomed wig is very
much in evidence.
Priestley brought his young bride to "the good dwelling-house neatly
filled up, handsomely sashed to the front, with a flight of five steps
to the entrance, three storeys high, four rooms on a floor, cellared
under, with convenient kitchens, yards and out-offices," over which she
was to preside for the next five years. To add to her responsibilities
she was promptly charged with the care of the gay but improvident Mr Ben
Vaughan and his brother Bill, and "received the very moderate
compensation of fifty pounds a year for each son."
Priestley's house in Academy Street still remains, and the fact that he
occupied it until his removal in 1767 is commemorated by a bronze tablet
affixed to its walls by the members of the Warrington Society on the
hundredth anniversary of his death.
There is a local tradition that an adjoining building was used by him as
a laboratory, although it is difficult to find any grounds for the
belief. There is no mention of experimental work at this time in his
memoirs or correspondence, and whatever he might have done in this
direction for his own amusement or the instruction of his pupils needed
no special apartment.[11]
Lectures on chemistry were, however, given at the academy by Matthew
Turner, who is believed to have first turned Priestley's attention to
that science. Turner, who practised medicine in Liverpool, although an
eccentric man, applied his knowledge of chemistry to industrial
purposes, and he is credited with having revived the art of
glass-painting.
Priestley was now wholly engrossed in the business of teaching, and
although nominally tutor in the classical languages and in the _belles
lettres_, there was practically no department of education in which at
one time or other during the half-dozen years of his sojourn at
Warrington he was not called upon, or did not offer, to instruct. He
enlarged and published the _Grammar_ to which reference has already been
made, and began a treatise on "The Structure and Contemporary State of
the English Language," the material for which he eventually gave to
Croft of Oxford for the compilation of his _Grammar_ and _Dictionary_.
But what particularly impressed him as a practical educationist was that
whilst most of his pupils were designed for situations in civil and
active life, every article in the plan of their education was adapted to
the learned professions. There was hardly any medium between an
education for the counting-house, consisting of writing, arithmetic and
merchants' accounts, and a method of instruction in the abstract
sciences. He proceeds to trace how this came about:--
"Formerly none but the clergy were thought to have any occasion for
learning. It was natural, therefore, that the whole plan of education,
from the Grammar School to the finishing at the University, should be
calculated for their use. If a few other persons, who were not
designed for Holy Orders, offered themselves for education, it could
not be expected that a course of studies should be provided for them
only. And, indeed, as all those persons who superintended the business
of education were of the clerical order, and had themselves been
taught nothing but the rhetoric, logic and school-divinity, or civil
law, which comprised the whole compass of human learning for several
centuries, it could not be expected that they should entertain larger,
or more liberal, views of education; and still less that they should
strike out a course of study for the use of men who were universally
thought to have no need of study, and of whom few were so sensible of
their own wants as to desire any such advantages.
"Besides, in those days, the great ends of human society seem to have
been but little understood. Men of the greatest rank, fortune and
influence, and who took the lead in all the affairs of State, had no
idea of the great objects of wise and extensive policy, and therefore
could never apprehend that any fund of knowledge was requisite for the
most eminent stations in the community. Few persons imagined what were
the true sources of wealth, power and happiness in a nation. Commerce
was little understood, or even attended to; and so slight was the
connection of the different nations of Europe that general politics
were very contracted. And thus, men's views being narrow, little
previous furniture of mind was requisite to conduct them."
These paragraphs constitute the introduction to an _Essay on Education_
which Priestley published in 1764, with the object of drawing attention
to the necessity for a reform in our educational system. Although
written nearly a century and a half ago, Priestley's main contention
that the education of youth should be directed and adapted to the
circumstances and needs of the time in which they live is just as valid
now as then, and needs the same insistence. He points out that "the
severe and proper discipline" of the Grammar Schools, which are
subservient to the Universities, is become a "topic of ridicule."
"This is certainly a call upon us to examine the state of education in
this country, and to consider how those years are employed which men
pass previous to their entering into the world; for upon this their
future behaviour and success must, in a great measure, depend. A
transition, which is not easy, can never be made with advantage; and
therefore it is certainly our wisdom to contrive that the studies of
youth should tend to fit them for the business of manhood; and that
the objects of their attention, and turn of thinking in younger life,
should not be too remote from the destined employment of their riper
years. If this be not attended to they must necessarily be mere
novices upon entering the great world, be almost unavoidably
embarrassed in their conduct, and, after all the time and experience
bestowed upon their education, be indebted to a series of blunders for
the most useful knowledge they will ever acquire."
"That man is a friend of his country who observes and endeavours to
supply any defects in the methods of educating youth."
At the risk of being called "a projector, a visionary, or whatever
anybody pleases," he proceeds to show "how to fill up with advantage
those years which immediately precede a young gentleman's engaging in
those higher spheres of active life in which he is destined to move."
It will be observed that Priestley is not dealing with any scheme of
national or universal education adapted to every youth in the community.
He is concerned only with the young man who is destined for a station in
which his conduct may considerably affect the liberty and the property
of his countrymen, and the riches, the strength and the security of his
country; and who is within the influence of an honourable ambition to
appear as a legislator in the State, or of standing near the helm of
affairs and guiding the secret springs of Government--in a word, that
class which the universities thought they alone were specially concerned
with.
"That the parents and friends of young gentlemen destined to act in
any of these important spheres may not think a liberal education
unnecessary to them, and that the young gentlemen themselves may enter
with spirit into the enlarged views of their friends and tutors, I
would humbly propose some new articles of academical instruction, such
as have a nearer and more evident connection with the business of
active life, and which may therefore bid fairer to engage the
attention and rouse the thinking powers of young gentlemen of an
active genius. The subjects I would recommend are 'Civil History,' and
more especially the important objects of 'Civil Policy'; such as the
theory of laws, government, manufactures, commerce, naval force, etc.,
with whatever may be demonstrated from history to have contributed to
the flourishing state of nations, to rendering a people happy and
populous at home and formidable abroad; together with those articles
of previous information, without which it is impossible to understand
the nature, connections and mutual influences of those great objects."
He then gives plans and detailed syllabuses of three distinct courses of
lectures subservient to this design. The first is on the "Study of
History in General"; the second on the "History of England," and the
third on the "Present Constitution and Laws of England." This scheme is
so daring an innovation on the established order of things 150 years
ago, that Priestley then proceeds with care to anticipate, examine and
rebut the objections which may be urged against it. There is no
necessity to dwell upon them now. Much water has flowed under the Folly
Bridge or past the "Backs" since Priestley's essay was penned, and
everything for which he contended, and even more, now finds its proper
place in the educational schemes of all our universities, ancient and
modern. But it is significant of the condition of things in the older
seats of learning in the middle of the eighteenth century, that he
should have to urge his project apologetically and to labour points
which to-day appear almost axiomatic. The essay is characteristic of the
author in the breadth and liberality of its tone, in its declaration of
the real functions and objects of government, and in its note of true
patriotism. Of course it was fiercely attacked, among others, by
Griffiths in the _Monthly Review_, but it enlisted Josiah Wedgwood's
sympathy with its author and formed the basis of a friendship as cordial
and enduring as it was useful.
The lectures on "History" and on "General Policy" were subsequently
published, with a dedication, as already stated, to Mr Benjamin Vaughan.
It is interesting at this juncture to learn the views Priestley
inculcated on the youth of Warrington concerning other matters which,
like the education problem and the poor, are always with us.
In the 51st lecture on "General Policy" we read:--
"The gain of the merchants, it is said, is not always the gain of the
country in general. If, for instance, a merchant imports foreign goods
by which the consumption of national manufactures is hurt, though the
merchant should be gainer by those goods, the State is a loser. As, on
the other hand, a merchant may export the manufactures of his own
country to his own loss and the nation's gain. But if the merchants be
gainers, the consumers, that is those for whose use manufactures are
established, having a power of purchasing or not at pleasure, must be
so too. And if, after sufficient trial, it be found that merchants
importing foreign goods can sell these cheaper than the manufactures
can be bought at home, it is an indication that it is not for the
interest of the nation at large to encourage such manufactures.
"Though exportation makes a nation rich, we are not to judge of the
quantity of riches which a nation gains by trade from exportation
only, but the importation must also be considered. If these exactly
balance one another nothing can be said to be gained or lost, just as
a person is not the richer for selling a quantity of goods if he buy
to the same amount. Nay, though the exportation be lessened, if the
importation be lessened more than in proportion, it proves an increase
of gainful trade, notwithstanding the decrease of exportation. This,
however, is estimating the value of commerce by the mere increase of
money. But a nation may flourish by internal commerce only, and what
is _external_ commerce between two nations not united in government
would be internal if they should come under the same government. In
every fair bargain the buyer and the seller are equally gainers,
whether money be accumulated by either of the parties or not.
"It is a great mistake to confound the king's revenue with the gain a
nation makes by its trade. No man would presume to say it is more for
the public benefit that the nation should expend a million or more
every year with foreigners, in order to raise a hundred thousand
pounds to the revenue by the customs, than to save that million or
more within ourselves and to raise only the hundred thousand pounds
the other way. But Ministers of State are apt to estimate the value of
everything to the country by the gain it brings, and that immediately
to themselves....
"The legislature of any country has seldom interfered in the affairs
of commerce, but commerce has suffered in consequence to it, owing to
the ignorance of statesmen, and even of merchants themselves,
concerning the nature of trade. And indeed the principles of commerce
are very complicated and require long experience and deep reflection
before they can be well understood....
"Most politicians have injured commerce by restricting, confining or
burthening it too much; the consequence of which has been that by
aiming at great immediate advantage they have cut off the very springs
of all future advantage. The inconveniences which have arisen to a
nation from leaving trade quite open are few, and very problematical
in comparison of the manifest injury it receives from being cramped in
almost any form whatsoever....
"Mr Colbert, a man of great probity, knowledge and industry ... would
have done better to have listened to the advice of an old merchant,
who being consulted by him about what he should do in favour of trade,
said, '_Laissez nous faire_.'"
In another place he says:--
"The happiness of all nations, therefore, as one great community, will
be best promoted by laying aside all national _jealousy of trade_, and
by each country cultivating those productions or manufactures which
they can do to the most advantage; and experience, in a state of
perfect liberty, will soon teach them what those are. In this state of
things the only advantage will be on the side of industry and
ingenuity, and no man or nation ought to wish it to be anywhere else."
With regard to questions of political and civil liberty, the theory of
the progress of law, the influence of religion on civil society, the
connection of modes of religion with forms of government, the teaching
is precisely what we should expect in such a hot-bed of liberal dissent
as the Warrington Academy. With regard to the connection between civil
government and religion he says:--
"The principal sufferer by this alliance between the Church and the
State is religion itself, that is, the members of society as
professors of religion and deriving advantages from it. For when it is
thus guarded by the State, if it be faulty or wants reformation, it
must long continue so. The professors of it, being interested in its
support, will do everything in their power to prevent any alteration,
though it should be ever so much wanted....
"It is alleged, in favour of these establishments, that religion has
an influence on the conduct of men in this life. No doubt it has, as
it connects the hopes of a future life with good behaviour in this.
But this is done in all sects of Christians, and as much in those
which are reprobated by the State as those which are encouraged by it.
Besides, if this was the true cause of attachment to Christian
establishments, the friends of them would be much more jealous of
unbelievers than they are of sectaries, which does not appear to be
the case.... One would think that Christian Governments might content
themselves with establishing the Christian religion in general without
confining themselves to any particular mode of it. But so far is this
from being the case, that by the present laws of this country a man
who denies the doctrine of the Trinity, which has no more imaginable
connection with the good of the State than the doctrine of
Transubstantiation, is deemed a blasphemer and sentenced to suffer
confiscation of goods and imprisonment....
"In all other countries the established religion is that of the
majority of the people, and the writers in defence of it vindicate it
on this principle, viz., that it is the religion of the majority,
whatever that be. But in Ireland we have a most remarkable exception
to this rule. There the established religion is not that of the
majority but of a small minority of the people, perhaps not more than
that of one in ten of the inhabitants. That so flagrant an abuse of
power should exist, and under a Government pretending to justice, and
even to liberality, is barely credible."
Here again much water has flowed under the bridges since these words
were penned, but the bread which Priestley cast upon the stream, as well
as that upon which he nurtured the young gentlemen of the Warrington
Academy, has, we recognise, not been wholly wasted. In regard to what he
considered other anomalies, the State still takes upon itself a "great,
dangerous and unnecessary burthen" by undertaking the care of religion.
From the remains of superstition the clergy are still considered as a
distinct order of men in this country, and they are in a manner
represented in Parliament by the bishops having seats in the House of
Lords. "From which," he says, "if they had a just sense of the nature of
their office, and consulted their true dignity, they would retire of
their own accord. At present their seat in the House only flatters their
pride and gives the minister so many votes."
In regard to other items of political and social development, it is
noteworthy that Priestley was a consistent opponent of national
education as we understand it to-day, on the ground that in his judgment
it was inimical to liberty and the natural rights of parents. His
position, in fact, was very similar to that taken up by a considerable
and influential section of Liberal Dissenters prior to 1870.
Whilst at Warrington he also gave lectures on the "Theory of Language,"
on the "Laws and Constitutions of England," and on "Oratory and
Criticism"--all of which were subsequently published, and which may
still be read with profit, despite Lord Brougham's sneering allusion to
the adventurous tutor afflicted with an incurable stutter who, having
never heard any speaking save in the pulpits of meeting-houses,
promulgated rules of eloquence and of jurisprudence to the senators and
lawyers of his country. The adventurous tutor with the incurable stutter
even taught Elocution, also Logic and Hebrew for a time, and one year he
gave a course of lectures on Anatomy.
Whilst at Warrington he published a _Chart of Biography_, exhibiting by
lines and spaces the succession of the eminent men in every age and of
every profession, with the relative length of their lives, and in such
manner that at any given epoch it could be seen not only who flourished
in it, but how all their ages stood with respect to one another, who
were a man's contemporaries, how far any of them was before him, or how
far after him, in the order of their births or deaths.
The _Chart of Biography_ procured for its compiler the degree of Doctor
of Laws of the University of Edinburgh.
It has been said of Priestley that he was not a man who made friends. If
it is meant by this that he was essentially a self-centred recluse, who
sought his relaxation in change of occupation, or only within his own
family circle, the statement gives a wholly imperfect idea of the man
and is very wide of the truth.
In reality he was one of the most gregarious and most easily
approachable of individuals, a man of strong, active human sympathies
and of much social charm. There is abundant evidence of this in the
testimony of his contemporaries; it is illustrated by numberless
anecdotes, and is reflected in almost every letter of his
correspondence.
It was, doubtless, under the impulse of the social instincts of his
nature that, whilst at Warrington, he was led to begin the practice of
spending one month in every year in London. This, remarks his son, was
of great use to him. He saw and heard a great deal. A new turn was
frequently given to his ideas. New and useful acquaintances were formed,
and old ones confirmed. London then, as now, was the centre of the
intellectual life of the kingdom and the Royal Society the seat of its
scientific activity. To a man of Priestley's versatility and eagerness,
whose curiosity ranged practically over every department of human
knowledge, these annual visits were a sort of intellectual tonic and
gave a powerful stimulus to his activity.
On the first of them he made the acquaintance of men who, in their
several capacities, proved to be true and valuable friends, notably, Dr
Richard Price, Mr Canton, and Dr Benjamin Franklin.
Dr Price, a philosopher, and an eminent nonconformist divine, and one of
the leading Arians of his time, is best known by his work on morals, and
by his writings on financial and political questions. Among these, his
papers in the _Philosophical Transactions_ on "Life Insurance" and on
the "Proper Method of Calculating the Values of Contingent Reversions,"
are specially noteworthy. His pamphlet on the National Debt is said to
have influenced Pitt in establishing the Sinking Fund for its
extinction, and that on the "Policy of the War with America" to have
contributed to the declaration of independence by the Americans. His
liberal opinions gained him the friendship and patronage of Lord
Shelburne. The acquaintance with Priestley soon ripened into a lasting
friendship, which was in nowise disturbed by the controversy on
materialism and necessity in which they subsequently engaged. Price and
Priestley held similar views as to the French Revolution, and both were
denounced with equal fierceness by Burke. Price died in the spring of
1791, and his funeral sermon was preached by Priestley, who succeeded
him in the care of the Gravel Pit Meeting at Hackney. He was a man for
whom Priestley ever entertained the warmest feelings of friendship on
the ground of his amiable simplicity, his truly Christian spirit,
disinterested patriotism and true candour.
John Canton, a notable schoolmaster in his day, is best known for his
electrical inquiries and for his work on the compressibility of water,
and his name is associated with the phosphorescent substance first
obtained by him by calcining oyster shells with flowers of sulphur.
Among the Canton papers in the possession of the Royal Society is a
letter from Seddon to Canton introducing Priestley, in which the latter
is described as the author of _A Chart of Biography_ and of an _Essay on
Education_, and in which the writer says of the bearer:--
"You will find him a benevolent, sensible man, with a considerable
share of learning. Besides the studies which belong to his profession,
he has a taste for Natural Philosophy which will not render him less
agreeable to you."
That Priestley greatly enjoyed and profited by his Christmas in London
is evident from the terms in which he refers to it in a letter to Canton
under date February 14, 1766.
"The time I had the happiness to spend in your company appears upon
revision like a pleasing dream. I frequently enjoy it once again in
recollection, and ardently wish for a repetition of it. I wish, but in
vain, that it may ever be in my power to return in kind your generous
communication of philosophical intelligence and discoveries."
He concludes the letter by expressing a desire to become a Fellow of the
Royal Society.
Benjamin Franklin, journeyman printer and journalist, statesman and
diplomatist, was about sixty years old when Priestley, then a man of
little more than half his age, first made his personal acquaintance. The
Royal Society, which had formerly ridiculed the discoveries which have
given Franklin his undisputed position as one of the most eminent
natural philosophers of his time, had paid him, although still a British
subject, the distinguished compliment of making him an honorary fellow.
At the time of Priestley's coming to town he was occupied with the great
struggle on behalf of the American Colony which ended in the defeat of
the Stamp Act, and his famous examination before a Committee of
Parliament had made him an object of great popular interest. During the
eight or nine succeeding years in which Franklin remained in England his
acquaintance with Priestley grew into the closest friendship, and there
can be no question that the friendship reacted powerfully on Priestley's
work as a political thinker and as a natural philosopher. Indeed, it may
be truthfully said that Franklin made Priestley into a man of science.
As the result of this intercourse with Canton and Franklin, Priestley
offered to compile what he called "a distinct and methodical account" of
the history of discoveries in electricity, provided he could be supplied
with the necessary books. Franklin warmly seconded the proposal, and
undertook, with the assistance of friends, to furnish all existing
literature on the subject. As a matter of fact almost the whole of the
historical account in Priestley's book is taken from the _Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society_, which was then the chief source of
information concerning electrical science, inasmuch as the English
electricians of that period, in addition to their own original papers,
which were both numerous and important, introduced into the
_Transactions_ detailed accounts of all the principal books on
electricity published abroad. In putting together his work, Priestley,
having, as he says, a pretty good machine, was led to endeavour to
ascertain several facts which were in dispute, and was thus led by
degrees into a large field of experimental inquiry, in which he spared
no expense that he could possibly afford. One of the most important of
his discoveries is that charcoal is a good conductor. He describes
coloured circles produced by receiving discharges from 21 square feet of
glass on metal plates. When an electrical battery is discharged light
bodies placed near the electric circuit are moved. Priestley ascribes
this motion to what he calls the force of the lateral explosion, and he
conceives it to depend upon the sudden elasticity given to the air. He
found that a long circuit conducts much worse than a short circuit, even
when the conductors are the same; also, that when the circuit contains
an imperfect conductor a spark passes to bodies near, no electricity
being communicated.
The work necessitated much correspondence with Franklin and others of
his philosophical friends in London, and much of his leisure was devoted
to his own experimental observations. Nevertheless, the book was
completed in less than a year. Hasty and imperfect as it was, "_The
History and Present State of Electricity_. With Original Experiments,
illustrated with Copperplates," was well received and ran through five
editions in its author's lifetime. Its publication at once stamped
Priestley as a man of science; it secured him recognition as such in
scientific circles at home and abroad, and was the immediate cause of
his election, on June 12, 1766, into the Royal Society. The growing
interest in the subject induced him to put together a _Familiar
Introduction to the Study of Electricity_, which had also a considerable
measure of success and was the means of popularising a knowledge of the
main facts then known concerning Frictional Electricity. Priestley was
instrumental in reviving the use of large electrical machines and
batteries. The first of the large machines for which Nairne became
famous was constructed in consequence of a request made to Priestley by
the Grand Duke of Tuscany to procure for him the best machine that could
be made in England. One of his machines, which figured in his _History_,
and also in his _Familiar Introduction_, is in the possession of the
Royal Society.