William Cobbett . Edward E. Smith
of an immense estate. … They purchased a little farm upon an eminence nearly opposite Troy. Here they were joined by Talleyrand, who had arrived about the same time in Albany, also an exile and in want. I became intimate with them. … They avowed their poverty, and resided together on the little farm, suffering severe privations, bringing to Albany the surplus produce of their land, and habitually stopping, with their butter and eggs, at my door. They yielded with a good grace to their humiliating condition. In the year following, I was surrounded in my office by a group of distinguished Frenchmen; the Count, Talleyrand, Volney, the philosophical writer and traveller, Mons. Pharoux, … and Desjardins, a former Chamberlain of Louis XVI.” This intercourse at length terminated, through the avowed dislike of the émigrés to American institutions, habits, and customs.
CHAPTER V.
“HEARING MY COUNTRY ATTACKED, I BECAME HER DEFENDER THROUGH THICK AND THIN.”
Nearly two years had elapsed, before Cobbett’s life was disturbed by any greater excitement than would be furnished by his daily pursuits as a teacher of the French language. Even in Philadelphia, where party spirit was strong, and antipathy to England was particularly manifest, a busy, hard-working man, with his bread to earn, and who had no natural taste for politics, had no need to interfere—and Cobbett would not have interfered, probably, had not the occasion been brought about almost by accident. The little republicanism which had leavened his mind, whilst in London, had disappeared, when he came to see more of human nature in his new country; and the municipal contests, and the flaring speeches and writings, which excited less industrious minds, had no charm for him. “Newspapers,” he says, “were a luxury for which I had little relish, and which, if I had been ever so fond of, I had not time to enjoy.”
But a circumstance occurred, about the middle of the year 1794, which aroused Cobbett’s native spirit; and offered, at the same time, an opportunity for its exercise:—
“One of my scholars, who was a person that we in England should call a coffee-house politician, chose, for once, to read his newspaper by way of lesson; and, it happened to be the very paper which contained the addresses presented to Dr. Priestley at New York, together with his replies. My scholar, who was a sort of republican, or at best, but half a monarchist, appeared delighted with the invectives against England, to which he was very much disposed to add. Those Englishmen who have been abroad, particularly if they have had time to make a comparison between the country they are in and that which they have left, well know how difficult it is, upon occasions such as I have been describing, to refrain from expressing their indignation and resentment; and there is not, I trust, much reason to suppose, that I should, in this respect, experience less difficulty than another.
“The dispute was as warm as might reasonably be expected between a Frenchman, uncommonly violent even for a Frenchman, and an Englishman not remarkable for sang-froid; and, the result was, a declared resolution, on my part, to write and publish a pamphlet in defence of my country, which pamphlet he pledged himself to answer; his pledge was forfeited; it is known that mine was not. Thus, sir [he is addressing Mr. Pitt], it was, that I became a writer on politics. ‘Happy for you,’ you will say, ‘if you had continued at your verbs and your nouns.’ Perhaps it would: but the fact absorbs the reflection; whether it was for my good, or otherwise, I entered on the career of political writing; and, without adverting to the circumstances under which others have entered on it, I think it will not be believed that the pen was ever taken up from a motive more pure and laudable. I could have no hope of gain from the proposed publication itself, but, on the contrary, was pretty certain to incur a loss; no hope of remuneration, for not only had I never seen any agent of the British government in America, but was not acquainted with any one British subject in the country. I was actuated, perhaps, by no very exalted notions of either loyalty or patriotism; the act was not much an act of refined reasoning, or of reflection; it arose merely from feeling, but it was that sort of feeling, that jealousy for the honour of my native country, which I am sure you will allow to have been highly meritorious, especially when you reflect on the circumstances of the times and the place in which I ventured before the public.
“Great praise, and still more, great success, are sure to operate, with young 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,