Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/756

Rh 732 P R I P R I the papers with a spark. The blow was a terrible one. Priestley and his family had escaped violence by timely flight, but every material possession he valued was de stroyed and the labours of years annihilated. But neither despair nor bitterness possessed him. He left Birmingham, and for three years preached in Hackney, then a suburban village, and in 1794 he went out to the young States whose cause he had advocated, to spend the last ten years of his life in the land of the future. He resided at Northumber land in Pennsylvania, eager as ever for controversy and research. His materialism, so-called, never dimmed his hope of immortality. His religion to the end was char acterized by a childlike simplicity of spirit. On his death bed he would have his grandchildren to kneel by his side for their daily prayers, and listened with pleasure to the hymns they lisped. On the 6th of February 1804 he clearly and audibly dictated a few alterations he wished to make in some of his publications. &quot;That is right,&quot; he said, &quot; I have now done &quot; ; and within an hour he quietly expired. The interest of Dr Priestley s life lies not so much in any splendid achievements, either literary or scientific, but rather in the character of the man. His career also affords a typical illustration of the mutual relation and interaction of several great factors of human progress at a very critical period. As a Nonconformist minister, born into a Calvin- istic circle, educated in an Independent academy, develop ing into a Socinian divine, yet maintaining always the most friendly relations with clergymen, priests, and orthodox ministers, he gives us a curious insight into the condition of English religion just before its sectarian divisions had hardened into their modern form. As a pioneer in the investigation of gases and the discoverer of oxygen he helped but, it must be admitted, as often by his mistakes as by his successes to erect chemistry into a science. As a professed materialist whose doctrines seemed at the same time to merge matter in force he, amongst others, prepared the way for the modern agnosticism, which declines to look behind phenomena. As a politician he anticipated nine teenth-century radicalism. In general, as an exceptionally single-eyed and fearless searcher after truth he bore the brunt of persecution by vulgar ignorance, and in his dis appointments illustrated how little can be practically accomplished by isolated enlightenment apart from popular education. The works of Dr Priestley, as collected and edited by John Towill Rutt, fill twenty-five octavo volumes, one of which, however, con sists of memoirs and correspondence. The date of this collected edition is 1832. It contains upwards of 130 separate works, varying in size from brief pamphlets to treatises in four volumes, and his labours range over almost all possible subjects of human knowledge or speculation. Mathematics, chemistry, physiology, grammar, logic, mental and moral philosophy, history, theology, interpretation of prophecy, politics, and sociology, all alike fur nished themes for Priestley s untiring pen, and if he did not write on any of them with striking originality he treated all with freedom and intelligence. In 1761 he issued his first published works, a treatise on the Scripture Doctrine of Remission and The Rudiments of English Grammar. From that date till 1767 he was content with publishing something every alternate year. But from 1767 to 1804 he allowed only two years to go by unmarked by one or more publications, many of them remarkable as monuments of con scientious and laborious industry. His first scientific work, The History and Present State of Electricity, ivith Original Experiments, was published in 1767. The rapid advance of science has left to this and similar works of his little more than an antiquarian inter est. But the treatise illustrates his prophetic spirit, inasmuch as it shows how far he was in advance of his contemporaries in appreci ation of the prospects of physical research. In 1774 he issued his first volume of Experiments and Observations on Different Branches of Air, &amp;lt;L-c. In this volume he announced his discovery of &quot;de- phlogisticated air,&quot; now known as oxygen. The then prevalent theory of phlogiston, or the combustible principle in matter, betrayed him into great confusion, evident enough in the very name he gave to his new &quot;branch of air.&quot; Nevertheless it is said of him in Roscoe and Schorleinmer s Chemistry (vol. i. p. 16) that &quot; no one obtained more important results or threw more light upon the chemical existence of a number of different gases than Joseph Priestley.&quot; These Experiments and Observations were continued through five volumes, of which the last appeared in 1780. Perhaps the limit of Priestley s power of growth is illustrated by the persist ency with which he clung to phlogiston notwithstanding the dis coveries of Black, Lavoisier, and Cavendish. In 1800 he issued a treatise called The Doctrine of Phlogiston established, and that of the Composition of Water refuted. In a letter of that year to the llev. T. Lindsay he says, &quot; I have well considered all that my opponents have advanced, and feel perfectly confident of the ground I stand upon. In this definitive treatise I insert all that is contained in my former publications on the subject, with many new experiments. Though nearly alone, I am under no apprehension of defeat.&quot; Dr Priestley clearly failed to appreciate the progress of the science he had done so much to promote. But the attempt made by Lavoisier to claim for himself a concurrent discovery of oxygen at the same time as Priestley s was certainly unjustifiable. This achievement, together with the first preparation of nitric oxide, nitrous oxide, hydrochloric acid, and other important gases, constitutes the true ground of his fame as a scientific pioneer (see Roscoe and Schor- lemmer, I.e. ). Priestley s chief theological works were the Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion, A History of the Corruptions of Christianity, and A General History of the Christian Church to the Fall of the Western Empire. Bishop Horsley s criticisms on the second of these works produced letters in reply, with additional evidence that the primitive church was Unitarian.&quot; His principal meta physical writings were Disquisitions relating to Matter and S2)irit and various essays and letters on necessarianism. A complete list of his works will be found in vol. i. part ii. of Rutt s collected edition. (J. A. P., jr.) PRIM, JUAN, MARQUIS DE LOS CASTILLEJOS, COUNT DE REUSS (1814-1870), Spanish soldier and statesman, was the son of Lieutenant-Colonel Pablo Prim, and was born at Reuss in Catalonia on 12th December 1814. He entered the free corps known as the volunteers of Isabella II. in 1834 and greatly distinguished himself throughout the Carlist War, in the course of which he rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and had two orders of knighthood conferred upon him. After the pacification of 1839 he entered political life, and as a progressist opposed to the dictatorship of Espartero he was sent into exile. How ever, in 1843 he was elected deputy for Tarragona and issued a pronunciamento against Espartero at Reuss ; and after defeating Espartero at Bruch he entered Madrid in triumph with Serrano. The regent Maria Christina recog nized his services, promoted him to the rank of major- general, and made him count of Reuss. Prim now looked forward to peace under a settled constitutional monarchy, but Narvaez, the prime minister, failed to understand what constitutional freedom meant, and Prim, on showing signs of opposition, was sentenced to six years imprisonment in the Philippine Islands. The sentence was not carried out, and Prim remained an exile in England and France until the amnesty of 1847. He then returned to Spain, but kept aloof from politics, and was first employed as captain- general of Porto Rico and afterwards as military represent ative of Spain with the sultan during the Crimean War. In 1854 he returned to Spain on being elected to the cortes, and gave his support to O Donnell, who promoted him to be lieutenant-general in 1856. In the war with Morocco, at the head of his division, he did such good service at Los Castillejos or Marabout, Cabo Negro, Guad al Gelu, and Campamento in 1860 that he was made mar quis de los Castillejos and a grandee of Spain. He next commanded the Spanish expeditionary army in Mexico, when he acted in exact accordance with the treaty of London and refused to consent to the ambitious schemes of Napoleon III. On his return to Spain he joined the opposition, heading pronunciamentos in Catalonia against Narvaez and O Donnell. All his attempts failed until the death of Narvaez in April 1868, after which Queen Isa bella fell more and more under the influence of the Jesuits, and became increasingly tyrannical, until at last even Serrano was exiled, and more than 10,000 persons, includ-