Part 4

[8] He always spent one month in every year in London which was of great use to him. He saw and heard a great deal. He generally made additions to his library and his chemical apparatus. A new turn was frequently given to his ideas. New and useful acquaintances were formed, and old ones confirmed.

These experiments employed a great proportion of my leisure time; and yet before the complete expiration of the year in which I gave the plan of my work to Dr. Franklin, I sent him a copy of it in print. In the same year five hours of every day were employed in lectures, public or private, and one two months vacation I spent chiefly at Bristol, on a visit to my father-in-law.

This I do not mention as a subject of boasting. For many persons have done more in the same time; but as an answer to those who have objected to some of my later writings, as hasty performances. For none of my publications were better received than this _History of Electricity_, which was the most hasty of them all. However, whether my publications have taken up more or less time, I am confident that more would not have contributed to their perfection, in any essential particular; and about anything farther I have never been very solicitous. My object was not to acquire the character of a fine writer, but of an useful one. I can also truly say that gain was never the chief object of any of my publications. Several of them were written with the prospect of certain loss.

During the course of my electrical experiments in this year I kept up a constant correspondence with Dr. Franklin, and the rest of my philosophical friends in London; and my letters circulated among them all, as also every part of my History as it was transcribed. This correspondence would have made a considerable volume, and it took up much time; but it was of great use with respect to the accuracy of my experiments, and the perfection of my work.

After the publication of my Chart of Biography, Dr. Percival of Manchester, then a student at Edinburgh, procured me the title of Doctor of laws from that university; and not long after my new experiments in electricity were the means of introducing me into the Royal Society, with the recommendation of Dr. Franklin, Dr. Watson, Mr. Canton, and Dr. Price.

In the whole time of my being at Warrington I was singularly happy in the society of my fellow tutors,[9] and of Mr. Seddon, the minister of the place. We drank tea together every Saturday, and our conversation was equally instructive and pleasing. I often thought it not a little extraordinary, that four persons, who had no previous knowledge of each other, should have been brought to unite in conducting such a scheme as this, and all be zealous necessarians, as we were. We were likewise all Arians, and the only subject of much consequence on which we differed respected the doctrine of atonement, concerning which Dr. Aikin held some obscure notions. Accordingly, this was frequently the topic of our friendly conversations. The only Socinian in the neighbourhood was Mr. Seddon of Manchester; and we all wondered at him. But then we never entered into any particular examination of the subject.

[9] At Warrington he had for colleagues and successors, Dr. John Taylor, author of the Hebrew Concordance and of several other works, on Original Sin, Atonement, &c. Dr. Aikin the Elder, Dr. Reinhold Forster the Naturalist and traveller, Dr. Enfield and Mr. Walker.

Receiving some of the pupils into my own house, I was by this means led to form some valuable friendships, but especially with Mr. Samuel Vaughan, a friendship which has continued hitherto, has in a manner connected our families, and will, I doubt not, continue through life. The two eldest of his sons were boarded with me.

The tutors having sufficient society among themselves, we had not much acquaintance out of the academy. Sometimes, however, I made an excursion to the towns in the neighbourhood. At Liverpool I was always received by Mr. Bentley, afterwards partner with Mr. Wedgwood, a man of excellent taste, improved understanding, and a good disposition, but an unbeliever in christianity, which was therefore often the subject of our conversation. He was then a widower, and we generally, and contrary to my usual custom, sat up late. At Manchester I was always the guest of Mr. Potter, whose son Thomas was boarded with me. He was one of the worthiest men that ever lived. At Chowbent I was much acquainted with Mr. Mort, a man equally distinguished by his chearfulness and liberality of sentiment.

Of the ministers in the neighbourhood, I recollect with much satisfaction the interviews I had with Mr. Godwin of Gataker, Mr. Holland of Bolton, and Dr. Enfield of Liverpool, afterwards tutor at Warrington.

Though all the tutors in my time lived in the most perfect harmony, though we all exerted ourselves to the utmost, and there was no complaint of want of discipline, the academy did not flourish. There had been an unhappy difference between Dr. Taylor and the trustees, in consequence of which all his friends, who were numerous, were our enemies; and too many of the subscribers, being probably weary of the subscription, were willing to lay hold of any pretence for dropping it, and of justifying their conduct afterwards.

It is possible that in time we might have overcome the prejudices we laboured under, but there being no prospect of things being any better, and my wife having very bad health, on her account chiefly I wished for a removal, though nothing could be more agreeable to me at the time than the whole of my employment, and all the laborious part of it was over. The terms also on which we took boarders, viz. 15 £. per annum, and my salary being only 100 _£_. per annum with a house, it was not possible, even living with the greatest frugality, to make any provision for a family. I was there six years, most laboriously employed, for nothing more than a bare subsistence. I therefore listened to an invitation to take the charge of the congregation of Mill-hill chapel at Leeds, where I was pretty well known, and thither I removed in September 1767.

Though while I was at Warrington it was no part of my duty to preach, I had from choice continued the practice; and wishing to keep up the character of a dissenting minister, I chose to be ordained while I was there; and though I was far from having conquered my tendency to stammer, and probably never shall be able to do it effectually, I had, by taking much pains, improved my pronunciation some time before I left Nantwich; where for the two first years this impediment had increased so much, that I once informed the people, that I must give up the business of preaching, and confine myself to my school. However, by making a practice of reading very loud and very slow every day, I at length succeeded in getting in some measure the better of this defect, but I am still obliged occasionally to have recourse to the same expedient.

At Leeds I continued six years very happy with a liberal, friendly, and harmonious congregation, to whom my services (of which I was not sparing) were very acceptable. Here I had no unreasonable prejudices to contend with, so that I had full scope for every kind of exertion; and I can truly say that I always considered the office of a christian minister as the most honourable of any upon earth, and in the studies proper to it I always took the greatest pleasure.

In this situation I naturally resumed my application to speculative theology, which had occupied me at Needham, and which had been interrupted by the business of teaching at Nantwich and Warrington. By reading with care Dr. _Lardner’s letter on the logos_, I became what is called a Socinian soon after my settlement at Leeds; and after giving the closest attention to the subject, I have seen more and more reason to be satisfied with that opinion to this day, and likewise to be more impressed with the idea of its importance.

On reading Mr. _Mann’s Dissertation on the times of the birth and death of Christ_, I was convinced that he was right in his opinion of our Saviour’s ministry having continued little more than one year, and on this plan I drew out a _Harmony of the gospels_, the outline of which I first published in the Theological Repository, and afterwards separately and at large, both in Greek and English, with Notes, and an occasional Paraphrase. In the same work I published my _Essay on the doctrine of Atonement_, improved from the tract published by Dr. Lardner, and also my animadversions on the reasoning of the apostle Paul.

The plan of this _Repository_ occurred to me on seeing some notes that Mr. Turner of Wakefield had drawn up on several passages of scripture, which I was concerned to think should be lost. He very much approved of my proposal of an occasional publication, for the purpose of preserving such original observations as could otherwise probably never see the light. Of this work I published three volumes while I was at Leeds, and he never failed to give me an article for every number of which they were composed.

Giving particular attention to the duties of my office, I wrote several tracts for the use of my congregation, as two _Catechisms_, an _Address to masters of families on the subject of family prayer_, a _discourse on the Lord’s Supper_, and on _Church discipline_, and _Institutes of Natural and Revealed religion_. Here I formed three classes of Catechumens, and took great pleasure in instructing them in the principles of religion. In this respect I hope my example has been of use in other congregations.

The first of my controversial treatises was written here in reply to some angry remarks on my discourse on the Lord’s Supper by Mr. Venn, a clergyman in the neighbourhood. I also wrote remarks on Dr. _Balguy’s sermon on Church authority_, and on some paragraphs in Judge _Blackstone’s Commentaries_ relating to the dissenters. To the two former no reply was made; but to the last the judge replied in a small pamphlet; on which I addressed a letter to him in the St. James’s Chronicle. This controversy led me to print another pamphlet, entitled _The Principles and Conduct of the Dissenters with respect to the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of this country_. With the encouragement of Dr. Price and Dr. Kippis, I also wrote an _Address to Protestant Dissenters as such_; but without my name. Several of these pamphlets having been animadverted upon by an anonymous acquaintance, who thought I had laid too much stress on the principles of the Dissenters, I wrote a defence of my conduct in _Letters addressed to him_.

The methodists being very numerous in Leeds, and many of the lower sort of my own hearers listening to them, I wrote an _Appeal to the serious professors of Christianity_, an _Illustration of particular texts_, and republished the _Trial of Elwall_, all in the cheapest manner possible. Those small tracts had a great effect in establishing my hearers in liberal principles of religion, and in a short time had a far more extensive influence than I could have imagined. By this time more than thirty thousand copies of the Appeal have been dispersed.

Besides these theoretical and controversial pieces, I wrote while I was at Leeds my _Essay on Government_ mentioned before, my _English Grammar_ enlarged, a _familiar introduction to the study of electricity_, a _treatise on perspective_, and my _Chart of History_, and also some anonymous pieces in favour of civil liberty during the persecution of Mr. Wilkes, the principal of which was _An Address to Dissenters on the subject of the difference with America_, which I wrote at the request of Dr. Franklin, and Dr. Fothergil.

But nothing of a nature foreign to the duties of my profession engaged my attention while I was at Leeds so much as the prosecution of my experiments relating to _electricity_, and especially the doctrine of _air_. The last I was led into in consequence of inhabiting a house adjoining to a public brewery, where I at first amused myself with making experiments on the fixed air which I found ready made in the process of fermentation. When I removed from that house, I was under the necessity of making the fixed air for myself; and one experiment leading to another, as I have distinctly and faithfully noted in my various publications on the subject, I by degrees contrived a convenient apparatus for the purpose, but of the cheapest kind.

When I began these experiments I knew very little of _chemistry_, and had in a manner no idea on the subject before I attended a course of chemical lectures delivered in the academy at Warrington by Dr. Turner[10] of Liverpool. But I have often thought that upon the whole, this circumstance was no disadvantage to me; as in this situation I was led to devise an apparatus, and processes of my own, adapted to my peculiar views. Whereas, if I had been previously accustomed to the usual chemical processes, I should not have so easily thought of any other; and without new modes of operation I should hardly have discovered any thing materially new.[11]

[10] Dr. TURNER was a Physician at Liverpool: among his friends a professed Atheist. It was Dr. Turner who wrote the reply to Dr. Priestley’s letters to a philosophical unbeliever under the feigned name of Hammon. He was in his day a good practical chemist. I believe it was Dr. Turner who first invented, or at least brought to tolerable perfection, the art of copying prints upon glass, by striking off impressions with a coloured solution of silver and fixing them on the glass by baking on an iron plate in a heat sufficient to incorporate the solution with the glass. Some of them are very neatly performed, producing transparent copies in a bright yellow upon the clear glass.

Dr. Turner was not merely a whig but a republican. In a friendly debating society at Liverpool about the close of the American war, he observed in reply to a speaker who had been descanting on the honour Great Britain had gained during the reign of his present Majesty, that it was true, we had lost the _Terra firma_ of the thirteen colonies in America, but we ought to be satisfied with having gained in return, by the generalship of Dr. Herschel, a terra incognita of much greater extent _in nubibus_.

T. C.

[11] This necessary attention to economy also aided the simplicity of his apparatus, and was the means in some degree of improving it in this important respect. This plainness of his apparatus rendered his experiments easy to be repeated, and gave them accuracy. In this respect he was like his great Cotemporary Scheele, whose discoveries were made by means easy to be procured and at small expence. The French Chemists have adopted a practice quite the reverse.

T. C.

My first publication on the subject of air was in 1772. It was a small pamphlet, on the method of impregnating water with fixed air; which being immediately translated into French, excited a great degree of attention to the subject, and this was much increased by the publication of my first paper of experiments in a large article of the Philosophical Transactions the year following, for which I received the gold medal of the society. My method of impregnating water with fixed air was considered at a meeting of the College of Physicians, before whom I made the experiments, and by them it was recommended to the Lords of the Admiral (by whom they had been summoned for the purpose) as likely to be of use in the sea scurvy.

The only person in Leeds who gave much attention to my experiments was Mr. Hay, a surgeon. He was a zealous methodist, and wrote answers to some of my theological tracts; but we always conversed with the greatest freedom on philosophical subjects, without mentioning any thing relating to theology. When I left Leeds, he begged of me the earthen trough in which I had made all my experiments on air while I was there. It was such an one as is there commonly used for washing linnen.

Having succeeded so well in the History of Electricity, I was induced to undertake the history of all the brandies of experimental philosophy; and at Leeds I gave out proposals for that purpose, and published the _History of discoveries relating to vision light and colours_. This work, also, I believe I executed to general satisfaction, and being an undertaking of great expence, I was under the necessity of publishing it by subscription. The sale, however, was not such as to encourage me to proceed with a work of so much labour and expence; so that after purchasing a great number of books, to enable me to finish my undertaking, I was obliged to abandon it, and to apply wholly to original experiments.[12]

[12] Many of the subscriptions remained unpaid.

In writing the History of discoveries relating to vision, I was much assisted by Mr. Michell, the discoverer of the method of making artificial magnets. Living at Thornhill, not very far from Leeds, I frequently visited him, and was very happy in his society, as I also was in that of Mr. Smeaton, who lived still nearer to me. He made me a present of his excellent air pump, which I constantly use to this day. Having strongly recommended his construction of this instrument, it is now generally used; whereas before that hardly any had been made during the twenty years which had elapsed after the account that he had given of it in the Philosophical Transactions.

I was also instrumental in reviving the use of large electrical machines, and batteries, in electricity, the generality of electrical machines being little more than play things at the time that I began my experiments. The first very large electrical machine was made by Mr. Nairne in consequence of a request made to me by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, to get him the best machine that we could make in England. This, and another that he made for Mr. Vaughan, were constituted on a plan of my own. But afterwards Mr. Nairne made large machines on a more simple and improved construction; and in consideration of the service which I had rendered him, he made me a present of a pretty large machine of the same kind.

The review of my history of electricity by Mr. Bewley, who was acquainted with Mr. Michell, was the means of opening a correspondence between us, which was the source of much satisfaction to me as long as he lived. I instantly communicated to him an account of every new experiment that I made, and, in return, was favoured with his remarks upon them. All that he published of his own were articles in the _Appendixes_ to my volumes on air, all of which are ingenious and valuable. Always publishing in this manner, he used to call himself my _satellite_. There was a vein of pleasant wit and humour in all his correspondence, which added greatly to the value of it. His letters to me would have made several volumes, and mine to him still more. When he found himself dangerously ill, he made a point of paying me a visit before he died; and he made a journey from Norfolk to Birmingham, accompanied by Mrs. Bewley, for that purpose; and after spending about a week with me, he went to his friend Dr. Burney, and at his house he died.

While I was at Leeds a proposal was made to me to accompany Captain Cook in his second voyage to the south seas. As the terms were very advantageous, I consented to it, and the heads of my congregation had agreed to keep an assistant to supply my place during my absence. But Mr. Banks informed me that I was objected to by some clergymen in the board of longitude, who had the direction of this business, on account of my religious principles; and presently after I heard that Dr. Forster, a person far better qualified for the purpose, had got the appointment. As I had barely acquiesced in the proposal, this was no disappointment to me, and I was much better employed at home, even with respect to my philosophical pursuits. My knowledge of natural history was not sufficient for the undertaking; but at that time I should by application have been able to supply my deficiency, though now I am sensible I could not do it.

At Leeds I was particularly happy in my intercourse with Mr. Turner of Wakefield, and occasionally, with Mr. Cappe of York, and Mr. Graham of Halifax. And here it was that, in consequence of a visit which in company with Mr. Turner I made to the Archdeacon Blackburne at Richmond (with whom I had kept up a correspondence from the time that his son was under my care at Warrington) I first met with Mr. Lindsey, then of Catterick, and a correspondence and intimacy commenced, which has been the source of more real satisfaction to me than any other circumstance in my whole life. He soon discovered to me that he was uneasy in his situation, and had thoughts of quitting it. At first I was not forward to encourage him in it, but rather advised him to make what alteration he thought proper in the offices of the church, and leave it to his superiors to dismiss him if they chose. But his better judgment, and greater fortitude, led him to give up all connexion with the established church of his own accord.

This took place about the time of my leaving Leeds, and it was not until long after this that I was apprized of all the difficulties he had to struggle with before he could accomplish his purpose. But the opposition made to it by his nearest friends, and those who might have been expected to approve of the step that he took, and to have endeavoured to make it easy to him, was one of the greatest. Notwithstanding this he left Catterick, where he had lived in affluence idolized by his parish, and went to London without any certain prospect; where he lived in two rooms of a ground floor, until by the assistance of his friends, he was able to pay for the use of the upper apartments, which the state of his health rendered necessary. In this humble situation have I passed some of the most pleasing hours of my life, when, in consequence of living with Lord Shelburne, I spent my winters in London.

On this occasion it was that my intimacy with Mr. Lindsey was much improved, and an entire concurrence in every thing that we thought to be for the interest of christianity gave fresh warmth to our friendship. To his society I owe much of my zeal for the doctrine of the divine unity, for which he made so great sacrifices, and in the defence of which he so much distinguished himself, so as to occasion a new æra in the history of religion in this country.