Price. Eleven years before, this scientific
divine, by a resolution of the American Congress, had been invited to
consider himself an American citizen, and to furnish the rebellious
Colonists with his assistance in regulating their finances. He had
disregarded this flattering summons. Full of zeal for "humanity," he
eagerly accepted the request of the Revolution Society to deliver their
anniversary sermon. In this discourse, the Doctor, the fervor of whose
sentiments had increased with age, maintained the right of the nation
"to cashier the king," choose a new ruler, and frame a government for
itself. The sermon and the congratulatory addresses it provoked were
published by the society and industriously circulated.
Mr. Burke's well-known "Reflections" appeared in October, 1790. The
book was hailed with delight by the conservatives of England. Thirteen
thousand copies were sold and disseminated. It was a sowing of the
dragon's teeth. Every copy brought out some radical, armed with speech
or pamphlet. Among a vulgar and forgotten crowd of declaimers, the
harebrained Lord Stanhope, Mary Wolstonecraft, who afterward wrote a
"Vindication of the Rights of Women," and the violent Catharine
Macaulay came forward to enter the ring against the great Mr.
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