6944. PRIESTLEY (Joseph), Welcome to.—
Yours is one of the few lives precious to
mankind, and for the continuance of which
every thinking man is solicitous. Bigots May
be an exception. What an effort, my dear sir,
of bigotry in politics and religion have we gone
through. The barbarians really flattered themselves
they should be able to bring back the
times of Vandalism, when ignorance put everything
into the hands of power and priestcraft.
All advances in science were proscribed as innovations.
They pretended to praise and encourage
education, but it was to be the education
of our ancestors. We were to look backwards,
not forwards, for improvement: the
President himself [John Adams] declaring, in
one of his answers to addresses, that we were
never to expect to go beyond them in real
science. This was the real ground of all the
attacks on you. * * * Our countrymen have
recovered from the alarm into which art and
industry had thrown them; science and honesty
are replaced on their high ground; and you,
as their great apostle, are on its pinnacle. It is
with heartfelt satisfaction that, in the first
moments of my public action, I can hail you
with welcome to our land, tender to you the
homage of its respect and esteem, cover you
under the protection of those laws which were
made for the wise and good like you, and disclaim
the legitimacy of that libel on legislation,
which under the form of a law was for some
time placed among them. [398]
—
To Joseph Priestley. Washington ed. iv, 373.
Ford ed., viii, 21.
(W.
March. 1801)
