Becomes literary companion to Lord Shelburne--Goes abroad--His visit
to Paris--His scientific work at Calne and in London--Continues his
theological and metaphysical studies--His growing unpopularity--Leaves
Lord Shelburne.
Priestley continued at Leeds for about six years. Although very happy
there he was tempted to leave Mill Hill Chapel to enter the service of
Lord Shelburne. How he was regarded by his flock may be gleaned from the
addresses which were presented to him on the eve of his departure;
these, together with his own farewell letter, are still preserved among
the Chapel books of Mill Hill. But a stipend of one hundred guineas a
year, and a house which was not adequate to contain a family now
increased by the birth of two sons, and with no possibility of making
any provision for them in the event of his death, induced him to accept
Lord Shelburne's proposals.
Lord Shelburne, afterwards first Marquis of Lansdowne, one of the most
enlightened of the many politicians who sought to direct the destinies
of this kingdom during the stormy times of the last thirty years of the
eighteenth century, had been Secretary of State in Pitt's administration
of 1766, but had been dismissed from office in 1768 on account of his
conciliatory policy towards America, and at this particular time was
living in retirement at Bowood. Under these circumstances his lordship,
a man of culture and fond of literature, sought the companionship of
some kindred spirit. Through the good offices of Dr Price, a mutual
friend, he was led to make Priestley so generous an offer--viz., two and
a half times his Leeds salary, a pleasant house at Calne in the summer
and a house in town during the winter, and a retiring allowance for life
should their connection be dissolved--that our philosopher was
constrained to accept a position which, despite its perils and possible
constraints, was so alluring. The engagement seems to have given
satisfaction also to Priestley's friends, if we may judge from the
following extract from one of Wedgwood's letters to his partner at
Etruria, Thomas Bentley of Liverpool, one of the founders of the
Warrington Academy:--
"I am glad to hear of Dr Priestley's noble appointment, taking it for
granted that he is to go on writing and publishing with the same
freedom he now does, otherwise I had much rather he still remained in
Yorkshire." Meteyard, II. 451.
In their political sentiments, and in their views on the great questions
which at that time divided parties, the two men had much in common. Lord
Shelburne was certainly not unaware of Priestley's political
proclivities, and the pamphlet he had written at Franklin's instigation
on the American question probably expressed his Lordship's own
sentiments. At the same time Priestley was under no obligation to serve
Lord Shelburne politically, and there is no evidence that any such
service was either expected or rendered. His office was nominally that
of librarian, but he had little to do in that capacity beyond arranging
and cataloguing the books and numerous manuscripts at Bowood and
Lansdowne House and making an index of Lord Shelburne's private papers.
Indeed, Lord Shelburne treated him rather as a companion and friend than
as a servant, taking him, in the second year of his engagement, on a
journey through Flanders, Holland and Germany as far as Strasburg, and
spending a month in Paris. The time he spent on the Continent made him
sensible of the benefit of foreign travel, even without the advantage of
much conversation with foreigners. Indeed, he says the very sight of new
countries, buildings and customs of an unfamiliar type, even the very
hearing of a fresh language, however unintelligible, stimulates and
widens the mind and gives it new ideas. He saw everything to the best
advantage and without any anxiety or trouble, and he had an opportunity
of meeting and conversing with every person of eminence wherever he
went, the political characters by Lord Shelburne's connections and the
literary and scientific ones by his own. One of these was Magellan, or
Magalhæns, a Portuguese Jesuit descended from the great navigator of
that name. He resided in England, where he died in, or shortly before,
1790. He had early information on scientific matters from abroad, and
was frequently employed in procuring English instruments for foreigners.
He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and an active correspondent of
Lavoisier's, to whom he sent all scientific memoirs published in
England, Priestley's among the number. Magellan was the subject of a
notable trial at law--one of the last indeed of its kind in England. He
was indicted at the suit of a common informer under the statute against
saying Mass, but the suit, which was heard before Lord Mansfield, was
dismissed on some point of legal informality.
It was, no doubt, mainly through Magellan that Priestley was brought
into the society of that brilliant galaxy of men of science which at
that period was the glory of France. In some respects he was out of
sympathy with this environment, and, as he confesses, soon tired of
Paris. Priestley never obtruded his religious convictions on any company
he might be in; at the same time he never forgot that he was a Christian
and a minister of religion. What is now called Agnosticism was at least
as prevalent during the latter half of the eighteenth century as at any
period of the history of Europe. Priestley tells us that a great part of
the company he saw at Lord Shelburne's did not really know what
Christianity was, and Lord Shelburne numbered among his friends and
political associates almost all who were intellectually eminent at that
time in this country. He was not unprepared, therefore, to find that all
the philosophers to whom he was introduced at Paris were unbelievers in
Christianity and even professed Atheists. He was told, indeed, by some
of them that he was the only person they had ever met with, of whose
understanding they had any opinion, who professed to believe
Christianity. It was this experience which caused Priestley to write his
_Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever_. He says that as he had
conversed so much with unbelievers at home and abroad he thought he
should be able to combat their prejudices with advantage. Indeed, he was
wont to say that the greatest satisfaction he received from the success
of his philosophical pursuits arose from the genuine weight it gave to
his attempts to defend the principles of Christianity and to free it
from those corruptions which prevent its reception with philosophical
and thinking persons.
Of the many advantages he enjoyed through his connection with Lord
Shelburne, Priestley was always fully sensible. It came to him at the
most opportune period of his career, and in the full tide of his
intellectual vigour. The years he spent in this association were, so far
at least as science is concerned, the most fruitful of his life. Lord
Shelburne was a generous patron, and particularly encouraged Priestley
in his chemical inquiries, affording him ample opportunity for their
prosecution and defraying much of the expense they occasioned. He had
pleasure in witnessing his experiments, and frequently requested him to
exhibit them to his guests, particularly to foreigners, by whom a
knowledge of Priestley's work was thus spread abroad.
Priestley's energies were, however, not wholly engrossed by his
scientific labours. Theology and metaphysics still claimed much of his
time, and to this period belongs the concluding portion of his
_Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion_ and his _Harmony of the
Gospels_, and his _Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit_. He also
at this time wrote some _Miscellaneous Observations relating to
Education_, and published his Warrington _Lectures on Oratory and
Criticism_, which he dedicated to his patron's eldest son, Lord
Fitzmaurice.
Certain of these publications occasioned considerable uproar at the time
of their appearance: the outcry indeed was such, he says, as could
hardly have been imagined. He was attacked in almost every newspaper,
and in the greater number of the periodicals, as an unbeliever in
revelation and no better than an Atheist. In the preface to his
_Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion_ he had been led to
question the principles of Reid, Beattie and Oswald with respect to
their doctrine of _common sense_, which they had made to supersede all
rational inquiry into the subject of religion, and he subsequently
developed the attack in a separate publication. He expressed his belief
in the doctrine of philosophical necessity and his admiration of
Hartley's theory of the human mind. He had uttered some doubt of the
immateriality of the sentient principle in man, and after giving, as he
says, the closest attention to the subject, he was firmly persuaded that
man is wholly material, and that our only prospect of immortality is
from the Christian doctrine of a resurrection.
Priestley clearly recognised that many of these publications were not
calculated to improve his relations with Lord Shelburne. Indeed, he says
several attempts were made by Lord Shelburne's friends, though none by
himself, to dissuade him from persisting in them.
He goes on to say that:--
"In order to proceed with the greatest caution in a business of such
moment I desired some of my learned friends, and especially Dr Price,
to peruse the work before it was published, and the remarks that he
made upon it led to a free and friendly discussion of the several
subjects of it, which are afterwards published jointly, and it remains
a proof of the possibility of discussing subjects mutually considered
as of the greatest importance with the most perfect good-temper and
without the least diminution of friendship."
Lord Shelburne's political enemies were not slow to take advantage of
the outcry raised against Priestley by the orthodox and to strike at the
patron through the philosopher.
It is obvious, from Priestley's letters to his friends at about this
period, that he was sensible that his relations with Pitt's Secretary of
State had become somewhat strained, and when he received an intimation
through Dr Price that Lord Shelburne wished to give him an establishment
in Ireland, where he had large property, he interpreted this as
signifying that the Minister desired that their connection should be
severed. They parted amicably, Lord Shelburne continuing to pay him the
promised annuity of £150 until the end of his days, paying it, too,
contrary to the insinuation of his enemies, with perfect punctuality.
That there was no unfriendly feeling on the part of Lord Shelburne at a
separation which seemed to be dictated solely by considerations of
political exigency would appear from the circumstance that a few years
later he sent a common friend to Priestley, who was then settled in
Birmingham, to invite him to resume his old position, accompanying his
request with expressions which left no doubt of the value he set upon
the companionship. Sensible as Priestley was of Lord Shelburne's
feelings towards him, he was in no mind to return to a situation which
experience had shown might be incompatible with independence.