About the year 1770, Dr. Price published a treatise on Reversionary Payments;" and soon afterwards, an "Appeal to the Public on the National Debt." At length, on the breaking out of the American war, his political ardor was at once roused; and he was determined to stand forth as the champion of the rights of man. Accordingly he devoted the winter of 1775 to writing his "Observations on Civil Liberty, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America." This pamphlet, according to his biographer, was received with rapturous applause by the friends of freedom, and was attacked with equal warmth by the bigoted and unenlightened, among whom was that puny politician, and "very equivocal friend of liberty," Mr. Edmund Burke. (p. 59.) Dr. Price now seems to have attained one object of his ambition, for he observes, in a letter to an American friend, that "he was become so marked and obnoxious, that prudence required him to be very cautious; and that he avoided all correspondence, even with Dr. Franklin, though so near him as Paris." (p. 64.) His patriotic zeal, however, was not damped. "Whenever Government thought proper to proclaim a fast, he considered it more as a political than a religious ordinance, and always took an opportunity on that day, contrary to his invariable practice on other days of religious worship, to deliver his sentiments on the conduct of the war, and on the evil consequences which were likely to result from it." (p. 68.) So just and enlightened were the Doctor's notions of the religious duty of a fast. pos In 1775, he was engaged in a philosophical controversy, with his friend, Dr. Joseph Priestley. "Of the purity of the motives," says Mr. Morgan, "which led each of these good men to engage in the controversy, there can be no doubt; nor is it sible not to admire the zeal and sincerity which they manifest throughout the whole of it in promoting the great cause of truth and virtue." (p. 91.) With the motives of these gentlemen we are not concerned; they must be examined before an higher tribunal. But we must express our firm conviction, that if all mankind had followed the advice of these illustrious teachers, neither sound laws, nor true religion, would now have existed upon earth. Dr. Price's politics were so admirably adapted for the meridian of America, that he had already received a formal invitation from Congress to settle in that country. This he thought it expedient to decline; but still anxious to diffuse the benefit of his advice, he addressed a pamphlet to the United States, " containing Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, and much valuable advice on the best means of securing securing those liberties for which they had successfully contended." (p. 104.) Our hero next appears in the character of a divine, and preaches a sermon at the opening of an academy of dissenters, which had been founded by some of the principal friends of rational religion." (p. 118.) By this phrase, we presume, the author would insinuate, that rationul religion is confined to persons of his own persuasion. We next find Dr. Price engaged in correspondence with Mr. Pitt on the subject of finance. The language of the biographer on this occasion is really curious. One would imagine, from the tone he assumes, that Mr. Pitt had been an exciseman, and Dr. Price had been Mr. Pitt. The n:inister is represented as writing a note to Dr. P., and asking his opinion on a certain plan of finance. Whereupon, we are informed, that Dr. Price, in his infinite condescension, "instead of bestowing much time in exposing this ineffective and miserable plan, which would have disgraced any minister that had adopted it, sent three other plans for Mr. Pitt's perusal." One of these plans, according to Mr. Morgan's account was adopted, after undergoing great al terations. "Nevertheless the plan, though crippled and mutilated in the first instance by Mr. Pitt, and still farther crippled by his successors, has produced the most beneficial effects, and entitled the author of it to the gratitude of the nation. I am far," adds Mr. M., "from denying his share of merit to the minister who had the discretion to adopt any measure of this kind.-But the friends of Dr. Price have reason to complain, that after enduring so much obloquy and abuse from his stupid opponents when he first proposed such a measure, and after a patient perseverance for fourteen years, having succeeded at last in convincing Government of the necessity of it, he should be deprived of the meagre boon of being noticed amidst the high sounding compliments which the minister bestowed upon himself in proposing the measure to Parliament. When he boasted of having raised a pillar to public credit, it would have been as well if he had proposed to have Dr. Price's name inscribed with his own upon the pedestal; but subsequent events have proved, that these names would have been ill associated in the same column." P. 124. They would indeed! never did two men exist, whose principles and characters had less resemblance. The one, gifted with talents which have never been surpassed, moving in the highest sphere of life, adorned with every accomplishment that the most perfect education could bestow, seems to have been raised up by Providence, in times of unexampled danger, for the protection of legitimate Government and social order. The other, 8 possessing possessing an understanding acute, but by no means extraordi nary, educated in a desultory manner, and confined, during the greater part of his life to a narrow circle of acquaintance, would perhaps never have been known beyond the precincts of the Old Jewry and Newington Green, had he not taken part in the most turbulent politics of his day, and gained celebrity at the expence of his character as a British subject. Such was the difference between Mr. Pitt and Dr. Price. Most cordially do we agree with Mr. M., that their names would have been ill associated on the same column. We now come to the last and most important passage of the Dr.'s life, when his visionary schemes of liberty, happiness, and equality, were almost realised. He seems at length to have arrived, in his own imagination, at those blissful seats, ἔνθα μακάρων Νασον ὠκεανίδες Αὖραι περιπνέυσιν· ἄνε θεμα δὲ χρυσᾶ φλέγει, Τὰ μὲν χερσόθεν ἀπ' ἀγλαῶν δενδρέων, "Υδωρ δ' ἄλλα φέρει Ὅρμοισι τῶν χέρας ἀνα πλέκοντι καὶ στεφάνοις. Pind. Olymp. II, I. 128. "Of all the events," says the biographer, "which distinguished Dr. Price's life, none interested or agitated him so much as the French Revolution. This, at the first moment of its explosion, raised his hopes to the highest point, and brightened all his prospects of the future improvement and happiness of mankind." (p. 148.) "Having never had the mortification to witness those sanguinary and atrocious deeds which disgraced and ultimately overturned the Revolution, the circumstances of his life can have no connection with them." P. 151. The Doctor died before the murder of the king and the atrocities of Robespierre; and therefore, although an ardent promoter of the Revolution, he is innocent of its consequences, A man who assists in setting fire to a stately edifice, dies of au apoplexy before the flames have reached their height; the circumstances of his life therefore can have no connection with the loss and misery which are occasioned by the conflagration. We would recommend the principle of this argument to the gentlemen who practise at the Old Bailey; it might occasionally extricate their clients from a very disagreeable situation. Innocent, however, as the Doctor might be, he was well informed of all that was going on at Paris by the assistance of a kindred kindred spirit, Mr. Jefferson. At this juncture (the autumn of 1789) he was requested by the friends of freedom in this country to preach on the 4th of November, at the anniversary meeting of the Society for commemorating the Revolution in Great Britain. These gentlemen, it appears, (whether from ignorance, or from design, is not quite evident) thought proper to confound the principles of the English and the French Revolutions, than which two things can not be more radically opposite. The object of the one was to preserve, of the other to annihilate the constitution of the respective governments. * "The circumstances of our Revolution," says Mr. Burke," and that of France, are just the reverse of each other in almost every particular, and in the whole spirit of the transaction. With us, it was the case of a legal monarch attempting arbitrary power-in France, it is the case of an arbitrary monarch, beginning, from whatever cause, to legalise his authority. The one was to be resisted, the other was to be managed and directed; but in neither case was the order of the state to be changed, lest government might be ruined, which ought only to be corrected and legalised. What we did was in truth, and substance, and in a constitutional light, a revolution, not made, but prevented. We took solid securities; we settled doubtful questions; we corrected anomalies in our law. In the stable fundamental parts of our constitution we made no revolution; nor any alteration at all. We did not impair the monarchy. Perhaps it might be shewn that we strengthened it very considerably. The nation kept the same ranks, the same orders, the same privileges, the same franchises, the same rules for property, the same subordinations; the same order in the law, in the revenue, and in the magistracy; the same Lords, the same Commons, the same corporations, the same electors. The Church was not impaired. Her estates, her majesty, her splendour, her orders and gradations continued the same. The Church and the State were the same after the Revolution that they were before, but better secured in every part." Speech on the Army Estimates, 9th February, 1790. Confounding, however, these radical distinctions, Dr. Price and his friends must needs select the 4th of November as a day It was voted by both Houses of Parliament, 6th Feb. 1688, that " King James II. having endeavoured to subvert the constitu tion of the kingdom, by breaking the original contract between King and people; and having, by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons, violated the fundamental laws, and withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, has abdicated the government, and that the throne is thereby vacant." Here is no mention of beheading or cashiering kings. for for the celebration of their orgies; the 29th of May would have been in reality as proper. The Doctor consented to preach before the patriotic band; and on this occasion rendered himself more notorious than ever by the mischievous and inflammatory harangue which he delivered. Our readers are well acquainted with the notice which is taken of this sermon in Mr. Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France." It would be endless to quote passages from that immortal work in illustration of the subject. The book is in every body's hand; and to that we must refer our readers for a complete exposure and refutation of those destructive principles of anarchy, maintained by Dr. Price in the pulpit of the Old Jewry. Whatever may have been the errors of Mr. Burke's political life, his firm and manly conduct at the dreadful period of the French Revolution, will for ever secure him a high rank among the patriots of Britain. Here all party feelings were thrown aside; and the whole force of his powerful and accomplished mind was exerted in defence of laws, liberty, and religion. His "Reflections" are perhaps the most perfect and useful piece of political writing now extant in the world. They display throughout the temper and dignity of a philosopher, the knowledge of a profound and experienced statesman, and that prophetic anticipation of consequences by which their great author was so eminently distinguished. Mr. Burke's attack upon Dr. Price has of course excited the indignation of the biographer, which he accordingly pours forth in these temperate and judicious words "The principles laid down in the discourse which he had delivered at the Old Jewry in November, drew torrents of abuse upon him from Mr. Edmund Burke, who, as if possessed by some dæmon of the nether regions, had never ceased from the first moment of the revolution to declaim in a manner the most outrageous against it, and against all the friends and supporters of it. The phantoms which his own disordered imagination had raised to alarm and inflame the members of the House of Commons, unhappily succeeded too well in misleading the more timid and lukewarm friends of liberty."-Soon afterwards we are gravely informed, that the 26 rancorous invectives of Mr. Burke, which he had poured forth in a volume of 400 pages, neither disturbed the tranquillity of Dr. Price's mind, nor had any other effect than convincing him that the violent passions of the author had deranged his understanding.” P. 164. To such nonsense as this we will not condescend to reply. It carries with it its own confutation: and can excite nothing but contempt in the mind of any sensible man. On the 14th of July, 1790, Dr. Price closed his public life, by serving the office of steward at a dinner in commemoration of the |