an Historical View of the English Government, etc. The latter work is very unequal, is prolix, and the author is often carried away too much by his theories. With all its defects, however, it is an important contribution to English political history, and still retains its value.

THOMAS POWNALL, 1722-1805, was actively engaged for a long time in American affairs, being Secretary to the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, then Governor successively of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and South Carolina, and finally returning to England in 1761. He steadily opposed the war against the Colonies, and predicted the result of the measures of the British Government. He wrote much on public affairs. The following are some of Governor Pownall's publications: Administration of the Colonies; Principles of Polity; A Memorial Addressed to the Sovereigns of Europe; Letter to Adam Smith respecting his Wealth of Nations, etc.

GRANVILLE SHARP, 1734–1813, was a philanthropist and a man of varied learning.

Sharp held a position in the Ordnance Office at the time of the American Revolutionary War, but he disapproved so strongly of the measures of the British Government that he resigned his office rather than participate in any way in the prosecution of the war. The remainder of his life was devoted to philanthropic objects and to letters. His publications were numerous, and many of them of an elegant and scholarly character. The following are the titles of a few: Remarks on the Use of the Definite Article in the Greek Text of the New Testament; Short Treatise on the English Tongue; Ancient Divisions of the English Nation into Hundreds and Tithings; Declaration of the People's Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature; The Law of Liberty; The Law of Nature; Slavery in England; On Duelling; Remarks on Several very Important Prophecies; On Babylon; On Jerusalem; On Melchisedec, etc.

CHARLES JENKINSON, Earl of Liverpool, 1727-1808, in consequence of his abilities as a statesman, was created, first Lord Hawkesbury, and afterwards Earl of Liverpool.

He wrote several works, mostly pertaining to statesmanship: National and Constitutional Force in England; Treaties between Great Britain and Other Powers, 3 vols., 8vo; Discourse on the Conduct of Great Britain in respect to Neutral Nations, 3 vols., 8vo, translated into most of the languages of Europe; Treatise on the Coins of the Realm; Life of Simon Lord Gresham.

RT. HON. WM. WYNDHAM, 1750-1810, was a conspicuous statesman and Parliamentary orator.

He was born in London, and was educated at Glasgow and at Oxford; he sat in Parliament from 1782 to 1810. His Speeches in Parliament have been published, with some account of his Life, by Thomas Amyot, in 3 vols., 8vo.

"He was a man of great, original, and commanding genius, with a mind cultivated with the richest stores of intellectual wealth, and a fancy winged to the highest flights of a most captivating imagery; of sound and spotless integrity, with a warm spirit but a generous heart; and of courage and determination so characteristic as to hold

him forward as the strong example of what the old English heart could endure."Earl Grey.

RT. HON. HENRY GRATTAN, 1750-1820, was born in Dublin, and educated in Trinity College of that city. He attained the highest eminence as a speaker, both in the Irish Parliament and in the British.

"He was the sole person in modern oratory of whom it could be said that he had attained the first class of eloquence in two Parliaments, differing from each other in their tastes, habits, and prejudices as much, probably, as any two assemblies of different nations."- Mackintosh, He is commended on all sides for the spotless purity of his life. His works are: Speeches in the Irish and in the Imperial Parliament, 4 vols; Miscellaneous Works, etc.

Adam Smith.

Adam Smith, 1723-1790, was the ablest writer of his age on political economy, and one of the ablest of all ages. His work, The Wealth of Nations, is an acknowledged classic on that subject.

Career. Smith studied at Glasgow and Oxford, and became Lecturer on Belles-Lettres at Edinburgh, and Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow. From 1764 to 1766 he accompanied the Duke of Buccleugh, as tutor, on a tour over the continent. In this way he became acquainted with Turgot, Necker, D'Alembert, and the other leading thinkers and writers of France of that day. From 1766 to 1776, while engaged in writing his Wealth of Nations, he lived in retirement. The last twelve years of his life he passed in Edinburgh, as Commissioner of Customs.

His Authorship. · -Adam Smith belongs to that fortunate class of authors who have made themselves famous by one book. For although his Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759, was received with much favor and applause in the eighteenth century, it is not going too far to say that it has been rejected and almost ignored by the nineteenth. His lectures on Belles-Lettres, at Edinburgh, although they established Smith's reputation as a brilliant writer, were never published; and his posthumous Essays on Philosophical Subjects are little known and read. Smith's fame, therefore, rests solely on his Wealth of Nations, which was published in 1776, but which had been contained, in substance, in one of his courses of lectures at Glasgow. Still, this one work is enough to justify the fame of any man. To its author belongs the rare merit of having created a new department of study. Before Smith's work, it is true, other writers had thrown our hints and ideas on special topics, but Smith was the first to follow them out, to reduce the obscure and isolated gropings of would-be reforms to system and co-operation, to establish, generalize, and elucidate, -in short, to create the study of political economy.

A New Science. - The publication of The Wealth of Nations marked a new era in human research. Thinkers saw that they were in the presence of a new and almost unexpected power, that what had before been regarded as a confused and arbitrary jumbling of facts, was capable of being reduced to law and order, and that one of the great phases of social and political science must thenceforth be reconstructed from top to bottom. Some of the principles laid down by Smith have been abandoned, others have been modified or expanded, new principles have been added. But, as a whole, the science of political economy is as Smith left it, and his book is perhaps the most readable manual for the beginner. Part of its success is due to the grace and vigor of its style.

"Perhaps the only book which produced an immediate, general, and irrevocable change in some of the most important parts of the legislation of all civilized states. The works of Grotius, of Locke, and of Montesquieu, which bear a resemblance to it in character, and had no inconsiderable analogy to it in the extent of their popular influence, were productive only of a general amendment,- not so conspicuous in particular instances as discoverable, after a time, in the improved condition of human affairs. The work of Smith, as it touched upon those matters which may be numbered and weighed, bore more visible and palpable fruit. In a few years it began to alter laws and treaties; and has made its way through the convulsions of revolution and conquest to a due ascendant over the minds of men, with far less than the average of those obstructions of prejudice and clamor which ordinarily choke the channel through which truth flows into practice. The most eminent of those who have since cultivated and improved the science will be the foremost to address their immortal master."- Mackintosh.

Priestley.

Joseph Priestley, 1733-1804, was a distinguished chemist, and also a writer of note on theological and political subjects.

Career. Priestley was educated for the Dissenting ministry, in which he served for many years, until his emigration to the United States, in 1794. He was for several years literary companion to the Earl of Shelburne, and also had charge of the largest Dissenting congregation in Birmingham. He made himself very unpopular by his Letters in Defence of the French Revolution. Having given a dinner-party to several friends, in commemoration of the destruction of the Bastile, the mob broke up the party and pillaged Priestley's house. Fortunately no one was injured. This was in 1791. Priestley removed from Birmingham to Hackney, where he became Principal of the Academy. In 1794, he came to America, and settled himself in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, where he gave himself up almost wholly to agricultural pursuits, preaching and lecturing occasionally.

The Hatred against Him.- No really worthy man was probably ever made the object of more unceasing hatred than was Priestley. Had he lived in quieter times, he might have escaped with the name of a great but eccentric genius. But unfortunately his age was that of the French Revolution. The excesses of the Revolu

tion and the hostilities between France and England had brought about a strong reaction against everything that savored of Jacobinism. The Tory party, led by Pitt and inspired by Burke, proceeded from one act of oppression to another. It was emphatically the age of public prosecutions. Priestley, as a known sympathizer with revolutionary principles, both in religion and in politics, was peculiarly obnoxious. He was not prosecuted, it is true, but he was abused and anathematized with an energy that was so disproportionate to his amiable, peaceable character as to appear to us ridiculous.

The absurdity becomes still more evident when we consider how comparatively unimportant his theological and political writings are, and how exclusively his merits lay in another direction. Priestley was a Unitarian, a Socinian, a Materialist, perhaps, but no worse and no abler than many of his predecessors or contemporaries. Had he been nothing more than a writer on speculative philosophy, he would have fallen into obscurity long ago. But he was one of the greatest discoverers in the annals of British science, and, next to Lavoisier, was the founder of modern chemistry; and he should be judged as such, not as a mere writer. In private life he was amiable and upright. In public controversy he was apt to lose his judgment and his selfcontrol.

Works.-Priestley's works are extremely numerous. Of those on theology or philosophy the best known are the Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion, giving a complete system of Socinianism, a Free Discussion of the Principles of Materialism and Free Necessity, History of Early Opinions concerning Christ, Letters to Burke, occasioned by his Reflections on the French Revolution, etc. As a man of science, Priestley is known as the discoverer of oxygen, sulphurous acid, muriatic acid, carbonic acid, and many other substances, and of the processes of respiration in animals and, in a measure at least, in plants. He laid the foundation for the chemistry of the gases, and invented new processes for the formation of artificial waters. Indeed he appears to have been one of those genial characters to whom nature is fond of whispering her secrets. He did not think out so much as work out his discoveries.

Horsley.

SAMUEL HORSLEY, LL. D., 1733-1806, is known by his controversy with Priestley on the Unitarian question, and by a learned work on Isaiah.

Horsley was born in London and educated at Cambridge. He became a Bishop in the Church of England, also a member of the Royal Society, and is well known for his attainments in mathematics and physics. In 1782-4, Horsley was engaged in a violent controversy with Dr. Priestley about the views which the latter had put forth concerning the belief of the primitive Christians as to the nature of Christ. In this encounter, Dr. Priestley, it is generally admitted, was worsted. In 1779 Horsley published an edition of Newton's complete works, which was pronounced by Playfair to be a complete failure. His literary reputation rests in the main on his critical disquisition upon the eighteenth chapter of Isaiah, and upon his collected Sermons.

"Much original, deep, devout, and evangelical matter, with much that is bold, hazardous, speculative, and rash. . . . Bishop Horsley's powers of mind were of a high order; and his sermons and other works will render assistance to the student chiefly in the way of criticism."- Bickersteth.

RICHARD PRICE, D. D., 1723-1791, one of the most thoughtful writers of the last century, was born in Wales, and educated at Coward's Dissenting Academy, in London. He was a metaphysician of marked ability, a semi-Arian in his theological opinions, an ardent friend of liberty, and an advocate of republican institutions.

In consequence of his liberal political opinions, he was invited by the Continental Congress to emigrate to America, but he declined. In his metaphysical writings, he controverted the doctrine of a Moral Sense as irreconcilable with the unalterable character of moral ideas, and maintained that those ideas are eternal and original principles of the intellect itself, independent of the Divine Will. As a writer on political economy, he is chiefly known as the author of several pamphlets which suggested to Pitt the foundation of his great Funding Scheme for the National Debt. The following are the titles of some of his works: A Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals; Dissertations on moral and religious subjects; Observations on Reversionary Payments, Annuities, etc.; An Appeal to the Public on the National Debt; State of the Public Debts and Finances; Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America, etc.

Paley.

William Paley, D. D., 1743-1805, attained great and permanent celebrity by his writings on Moral Philosophy and kindred subjects.

Paley held a variety of church preferments, but is generally quoted as Archdeacon Paley. He was educated at Cambridge, and was Senior Wrangler in his class.

Paley's works are not so numerous as those of some divines of equal celebrity, but are of extraordinary excellence. They are Moral and Political Philosophy, Natural Theology, Evidences of Christianity, and Horæ Paulinæ. All these have been used as text-books in colleges and other institutions of learning, both in England and Amer ica, to an extent not equalled by any other set of books on the same subjects, and part of them are still used extensively, notwithstanding the many and able treatises on these subjects which have appeared since the days of Paley.

Paley's theory of morals, basing duty upon expediency, is regarded as unsound, and many of the practical duties which he deduced from it are considered lax. Yet such is the clearness of his reasoning, and so valuable is his work in the other portions of it, that many instructors even now prefer Paley's book on Moral Philosophy to any other, making in the classroom the corrections which may be needed. The latter part of his work, however, treating of Political Philosophy, is a meagre and unsatisfactory outline, and has never been much used.

His Natural Theology, proving the existence and perfections of God from the evidences of design in his works, has never been superseded, and it probably never will be. The work on the Evidences, though excellent, has not been considered quite equal to his other works. The Horæ Paulinæ, however, is unsurpassed as a specimen of ingenious reasoning from circumstantial evidence, and it will probably hold its own to the end of time.