PRIESTLEY, Joseph, LL.D.and F. R. S.,a natural phi losopher and theologian, was born upon the 24th of March 1 773, at Field-head, in the parish of Bristall, in the west riding of Yorkshire. His father was a cloth-manufacturer, and both his parents were respectable Calvinistic dissenters. A strong desire of reading was one of the first passions which this philosopher exhibited, and which probably induced his parents and friends to change their mind respecting his destination, and, instead of bringing him up as a tradesman, to qualify him for some learned profession. He acquired a knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, in the school of an eminent teacher at Bartlcy; and, at the age of nineteen, he became a theological student in the academy of Da ventry. When about the age of twenty-two, he was made choice of as assistant minister to the Independent congregation of Needham Market, in Suffolk. Having resided at Needham for about three years, he received an invitation to become pastor of a small flock at Namptwitch, in Cheshire, which he accepted. Here he opened a day school, in the management of which he displayed that turn for research, and that spirit of improvement, which were afterwards destined to form such prominent features in his character. His reputation as a man of extraordinary talents and diligent inquiry, soon spread amongst his professional brethren; and when Dr. Aitken was chosen to succeed the reverend Dr. Taylor as professor of divinity at Warring-ton, the vacant department of belles lettres was assigned to Mr. Priestley.

His literary career may probably be said to have commenced at Warrington; and the extent, as well as the originality of his pursuits, were soon announced to the world by a variety of valuable publications. Much of his attention about this period was taken up with general politics, on which he delivered a number of lectures. Although it was reasonable to think that his time would be sufficiently occupied by his academical and literary employments, yet his unwearied activity and industry found means to accomplish the first great work in philosophy which laid a foundation for his future fame,

Havinglongamused himselfwith an electrical machine, and felt himself interested in the progress of discovery in that branch of physics, he undertook a history of electricity, with an account of its present state. This work made its first appearance at Warrington in the year 1767, and was so well received by the learned world, that it went through a fifth edition in quarto, in the year 1794. It is justly deemed a valuable performance, and its original experiments are allowed to be very ingenious.

About the year 1768, he was chosen as pastor of a large and respectable congregation of Protestant dissenters at Leeds, which led him to give a very large share of his attention to theological subjects. His mind is said to have been from childhood strongly impressed with sentiments of piety and devotion; and although he changed most of those religions sentiments in which he had been instructed, for such as he regarded more rational and consistent with truth, his piety and devotion never deserted him. He was at the head of the moderate Unitarians, whose leading tenet is the proper humanity of Christ; confining every species of religious worship and adoration to the one Supreme Being. Some, we believe, have charged him with a design to subvert the Christian religion; but, since zeal for Christianity, as a divine dispensation, and the most valuable of all gifts bestowed upon the human race, was his ruling passion, such an imputation cannot, in fairness, be admitted.

His History and Present State of Discoveries relating to Vision, Light, and Colours, appeared in 1772, in two volumes quarto. This is allow ed to be a performance of great merit and lucid arrangement; but it did not bring him such a large share of popularity as his History of Electricity, because it is probable that he was scarcely qualified to explain the more abstruse parts of the science. In the year [7:18:532]1770, he quitted the town of Leeds for a situation entirely different f rom that which he had held there. His philosophical writings and the recommendation of Dr. Price had made him favourably known to the Earl of Shelburne, who held out to him such advantageous proposals for residing with him, that a regard for his family did not permit him to reject them. The domestic tuition of Lord Shelburne’s sons having been previously committed to a man of merit, they received no instructions from Dr. Priestley further than some courses of experimental philosophy. He also attended his Lordship in a visit to Paris, where he had an opportunity of seeing some of the most celebrated men of science in that country, whom he astonished by asserting a firm belief in revealed religion, which had been presented to their minds in such colours, that they thought no man of sense could hesitate in rejecting it as an idle fable.

In the year 1775, he published his Examination of Dr. Reid on the Human Mind; Dr. Beattie on the Nature and Immutability of Truth; and Dr. Oswald’s Appeal to Common Sense. The design of this volume was to refute the doctrine of Common Sense, said to be employed as the test of truth by the metaphysicians of Scotland. He never intentionally misrepresented either the arguments or the purposes of an opponent; but he measured the respect with which he treated him by that which he conceived for him in his own mind. In the year 1777, he published his disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit, in which he gave a history of the philosophical doctrine respecting the soul, and openly supported the material system, which makes it homogeneous with the body. This subjected him to more odium than any of his other productions. As he materialized spirit so he in some measure spiritualized matter, by assigning to it penetrability and several other subtle qualities. About the same period he became the champion of philosophical necessity; a doctrine not less obnoxious to many than the former, on account of its supposed, or rather inevitable, effects on morality. So astonishing was the versatility of his mind, that he at the same time carried on that course of discovery concerning aeriform bodies, which has rendered his name so illustrious amongst philosophical chemists. A second volume was published in 1775, and a third in 1777. Some of his most memorable discoveries were those of nitrous and dephlogisticated or pure air; of the restoration of vitiated air by vegetation; of the influence of light on vegetables; and of the effects of respiration on the blood.

The name of Priestley was by these means spread throughout all the countries of Europe, and honours were heaped upon him by scientific bodies in various parts. The term of“his engagement with Lord Shelburne having expired, Dr. Priestley found himself at liberty to choose a new situation, and retired with a pension for life of L.150 a-year. He chose the vicinity of the populous town of Birmingham, which was then the residence of several men of science, such as Watt, Withering, Bolton, and Keir, whose names are well known to the public. Here he was invited to become pastor of a dissenting congregation, an offer which he accepted about the latter end of the year 1780. Soon after this appeared his Letters to Bishop Newcome, On the Duration of Christ’s Ministry, and his History of the Corruptions of Christianity, works which were afterwards followed by his History of Early Opinions. He displayed his attachment to freedom by his Essay on the First Principles of Government, and by an anonymous pamphlet on the State of Public Liberty in this country; and he evinced a warm interest in the cause of America at the time of its unfortunate quarrel with the mother country.

On the 14th of July, 1791, the celebration of the anniversary of the destruction of the Bastille, by a publicdinner, at which Dr. Priestley was not present, gave the signal for those riots which have brought lasting disgrace on the town of Birmingham, and in some degree upon the national cha racter. Amidst the conflagration of places of worship and of private dwellings, Dr. Priestley was the great object of popular rage; his house, library, manuscripts, and apparatus, were given as a prey to the flames; he was hunted like a criminal, and experienced not only the furious outrages of a mob, but the most unhandsome treatment from some who ought to have supported the character of gentlemen and friends of good order. He now lay under a load of public odium and suspicion, and, besides, he was constantly harassed by the petty malignity of bigotry. It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that he looked for an asylum in a country to which he had always shewn a friendly attachment, and which, he supposed, was in full possession of all the blessings of civil and religious liberty. In the year 1794, he took leave of his native country, and embarked for North America. He took up his residence in Northumberland, a town in the interior of the state of Pennsylvania, which he selected on account of the purchase of landed property in its neighbourhood; otherwise its remoteness from the sea-ports, its want of many of the comforts of life, and of all the helps to scientific pursuit, rendered it a peculiarly undesirable abode for one of Dr. Priestley’s habits and employments. The loss of his amiable wife, and of a most promising son, as well as repeated attacks of disease, severely tried the fortitude and resignation of this ill-fated philosopher.

In America he was received with general respect, and the angry contests of party were not able wholly to deprive him of the esteem due to his character. He was heard as a preacher by some of the most distinguished members of Congress; and he was offered, but declined, the place of chemical professor of Philadelphia. It became his great object to enable himself, in his retirement at Northumberland, to renew that course of philosophical experiment, and especially that train of theological writing, which had occupied so many of the best years of his life. By numerous experiments on the constitution of airs, he became more and more fixed in his belief of the phlogistic theory, and in his opposition to the new French chemical system, of which he lived to be the only opponent of any celebrity. By the liberal contributions of his friends in England, he was enabled to commence the printing of two extensive works, upon which he was zealously bent, a Church History, and an Exposition of the Scriptures ; and during the progress of his final decline, he unremittingly urged their completion.

Since an illness which seized him at Philadelphia, in the year 1801, he never recovered his formerstate of health. His complaint was constant indigestion, and a difficulty of swallowing food of any kind. But during this period of general debility, he was busily employed in printing his Church History, in writing the first volume of his Notes on the Scriptures, and in making new and original experiments. During this period, likewise, he composed his pamphlet of Jesus and Socrates Compared, and reprinted his Essay on Phlogiston.

From about the beginning of November 1803, till the middle of January 1804, his complaint grew more'Serious; yet, by judicious medical treatment and strict atterltion to diet, he, after a time, seemed to be, if not regaining strength, at least not getting worse; and his friends fondly hoped that his health would continue to improve as the season advanced. He, however, considered his life as very precarious. Even at this time, besides his miscellaneous reading, which was at all times very extensive, he read through all the works which are quoted in his Comparison of the different Systems of Grecian Philosophers with Christianity ; composed that work; and transcribed the whole of it in less than three months, thus leaving it ready for the press.

In the last fortnight of January, his fits of indigestion became more alarming than ever, his legs swelled, and his weakness increased. Within two days of his death he became so weak, that he could walk but a little way, and that with [7:18:533] great difficulty. He was fully sensible that he had not long to live, yet he talked with cheerfulness to all who called for him. He dwelt upon the peculiarly happy situation in which it had pleased the Divine Being to place him in life; the great advantage he had enjoyed in the acquaintance and friendship of some of the best and wisest men of the age in which he lived; and the satisfaction he derived from having led an useful as well as a happy life. On the 9th of February 1804, he breathed his last, so easily, that those who were sitting close to him did not immediately perceive his exit. He had put his hand to his face, which prevented them from observing the last moment of his being.

In the constitution of Dr. Priestley’s mind, great ardour and vivacity of intellect were united with a mild and placid temper. With a zeal for the propagation of' truth which nothing could subdue, he joined a calm patience, and an unruffled serenity of temper, which rendered him proof against disappointments. The rights of private judgment were rendered sacred to him by every principle of his understanding, and his heart would not have suffered him to injure his bitterest enemy. He was naturally disposed to be cheerful, and when his mind was not occupied with serious thoughts, he could unbend, with playful ease and negligence, in the private circle of friends; but in large and mixed companies, he commonly spoke little. In the domestic relations of life he was uniformly kind and affectionate; his parental feelings were those of the tenderest and best of fathers; and not even malice itself could ever fix a stain upon his private conduct, or impeach his integrity.