William Cobbett . Edward E. Smith

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and zealous men, as an encouragement to further exertion. Both were, in this case, far beyond my hopes, and still farther beyond the intrinsic merits of my performance. The praise was, in fact, given to the boldness of the man who, after the American press had, for twenty years, been closed against every publication relative to England, in which England and her king were not censured and vilified, dared not only to defend but to eulogize and exalt them; and, the success was to be ascribed to that affection for England, and that just hatred of France, which, in spite of all the misrepresentations that had been so long circulated, were still alive in the bosoms of all the better part of the people; who openly to express their sentiments, only wanted the occasion and the example which were now afforded them.”

      Joseph Priestley was one of the most estimable of men. Among those who have thrust back the barriers of Ignorance, he holds no mean place, whether as a student of natural philosophy, or as a Christian teacher. But he belongs to a period when the Pioneer had to suffer for his opinions.

      Born in 1733, he early evinced the qualities of a thorough student, mastered several European and Eastern languages, spent his spare cash in scientific instruments, and entered the ministry as an inflexible opponent of the cruel notions of “eternal wrath.” He was a man rather inclined to take always the heterodox side of things, as one who had discovered that most popular doctrines, in politics and religion, were founded on baseless traditions. Priestley’s contributions to science brought him within the fold of the Royal Society; and he was pursuing his studies at the same time that he had charge of an important dissenting congregation at Birmingham, when the French Revolution broke out, in 1789. By this time he was known as an ardent and honest controversialist, and had numerous warm friendships among the advanced Liberals of London and Paris; and his position at Birmingham was becoming hazardous, on account of the denunciations he underwent on the part of the orthodox in Church and State. Matters came to a crisis in the summer of 1791; when, a feast being held for the purpose of celebrating the fall of the Bastille, a mob assembled, highly strung with loyalty; which, after disturbing the diners, broke the windows of the hotel, proceeded to demolish Priestley’s and another meeting-house, his dwelling, and the houses of several other influential dissenters. In short, there was a genuine riot, for which the county had to pay.

      And Dr. Priestley had to leave Birmingham. Nor did three years of London life, with the fierce controversies of the day, serve to console him. Having succeeded his friend, the celebrated Dr. Richard Price, as pastor of a meeting at Hackney, he fought alternately with French sceptics and with English “divines;” but age was creeping upon him; his beloved scientific pursuits were being neglected; and he looked wistfully to the new land of liberty and toleration. His domestic hearth was a happy one, and he could at least take that with him wherever he went. So, in the spring of 1794, he set sail for America.

      His departure, however, was the signal for a good deal of affectionate demonstration. Addresses were presented to him, and he left his native shores with the good wishes and the regrets of thousands. But, flattering as this was, it was nothing to the reception Priestley experienced on his arrival at New York. He found himself welcomed to “a country worthy of him;” to a land where reason had “successfully triumphed over the artificial distinctions of European policy and bigotry;” by those who had “beheld with the keenest sensibility the unparalleled persecutions” which had attended him in his native country.

      So, the Philadelphia newspapers of June, 1794, published these addresses—the most noted of which were from the Tammany Society of New York, the Democratic Society of the same, the Republican Natives of Great Britain and Ireland resident in the City of New York, the Medical Society of New York, and the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. The Philadelphia newspapers, ready for all sorts of fiery attack upon England, printed these addresses in full, along with Dr. Priestley’s grateful replies. One of Mr. Cobbett’s intelligent pupils, in his studious zeal, produces such a newspaper, that his English exercises may be presented in the English of the day. As one of his own omelettes, he will have his English served up fresh; no musty Addison nor dry Delolme for him; no stale oligarchical stuff, ready for hatching into villainy and oppression; but the sweet, new-laid principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Which principles, as exemplified in their latest fruits, Monsieur le Maître d’Anglais abhors, with all his heart and soul.

      Accordingly, there forthwith appeared an anonymous pamphlet, under the title of “Observations on Priestley’s Emigration;” consisting of a review of the circumstances which had driven the Doctor from Birmingham, and eventually from England; and a running commentary upon the republican addresses which had been presented to him. The whole tenour of the tract, however, consisted in its expressed horror of the ruin and desolation which the theorists had brought upon France, and in pointing out what would be (in the mind of the writer) the logical result of the new ideas being disseminated in England. Priestley’s emigration, in point of fact, was made the peg on which to hang an anti-revolution tirade. Certain sound principles, however, were enunciated: an extract or two will serve to show this, and, by the felicitous terms in which they are conveyed, to display the wonderful command which Cobbett had already acquired over his native tongue.

      “System-mongers are an unreasonable species of mortals; time, place, climate, nature itself, must give way. They must have the same governments in every quarter of the globe; when, perhaps, there are not two countries which can possibly admit of the same form of government at the same time. A thousand hidden causes, a thousand circumstances and unforeseen events, conspire to the forming of a government. It is always done by little and little. When completed, it presents nothing like a system; nothing like a thing composed, and written in a book. It is curious to hear people cite the American government as the summit of human perfection, while they decry the English; when it is absolutely nothing more than the government which the kings of England established here, with such little modifications as were necessary on account of the state of society and local circumstances. If, then, the Doctor is come here for a change of government and laws, he is the most disappointed of mortals. He will have the mortification to find in his ‘asylum’ the same laws as those from which he has fled, the same upright manner of administering them, the same punishment of the oppressor, and the same protection of the oppressed. In the courts of justice he will every day see precedents quoted from the English law-books; and (which to him may appear wonderful) we may venture to predict, that it will be very long before they will be supplanted by the bloody records of the revolutionary tribunal.”

      “Even supposing his intended plan of improvement had been the best in the world, instead of the worst, the people of England had certainly a right to reject it. He claims as an indubitable right, the right of thinking for others, and yet he will not permit the people of England to think for themselves. … If the English choose to remain slaves, bigots, and idolaters, as the Doctor calls them, that was no business of his; he had nothing to do with them. He should have let them alone; and, perhaps in due time, the abuses of their government would have come to that ‘natural termination,’ which he trusts, ‘will guard against future abuses.’ But no, said the Doctor, I will reform you—I will enlighten you—I will make you free.—You shall not, say the people.—But I will! says the Doctor. By——, say the people, you shall not! ‘And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father.’ ”

      “I am one of those who wish to believe that foreigners come to this country from choice, and not from necessity. … The most numerous, as well as the most useful, are mechanics. Perhaps a cobbler, with his hammer and awls, is a more valuable acquisition than a dozen philosophi-theologi-politi-cal empirics, with all their boasted apparatus.”

      Mr. Thomas Bradford was again his publisher. The circumstance is fully related in the American autobiography:—

“When the ‘Observations’ on the Emigration of this ‘martyr to the cause of liberty’ were ready for the press, I did not, at first, offer them to Mr. Bradford. I knew him СКАЧАТЬ