BY a coincidence, superficially remarkable but really arising from the same or, at least, similar causes, the two great antagonists in eighteenth century chemistry, Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) and Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), were each, in an age that prided itself on a culture and enlightenment considered to be nowhere so advanced as among the nations to which these two men of science severally belonged, the victims of a violent political persecution that drove the one into voluntary exile and cost the other his life. The coincidence is, indeed, extraordinarily close : for, when Lavoisier’s head rolled from the scaffold on 8 May 1794, Priestley was in mid-Atlantic on his way to America, fortunate to have escaped with his hfe. An account of the political trial, in which Lavoisier was condemned to death for alleged counter-revolutionary conspiracy, has already been given in this journal.1 Priestley, accompanied by his wife, arrived at Sandy Hook on 1 June and reached New York on 4 June 1794. The mob-violence and the public disorder of the Birmingham riots of 1791 were far behind ; but, after 1791, life had still been very uncomfortable for Priestley even in London, and even among his colleagues in the Royal Society ; and he looked forward to better days in the New World. His hopes were not completely realized and he found peace only in the last years of his life. Priestley loved his country and was torn with indecision at the idea of leaving it ; but life in England had become intolerable for Mrs Priestley and also for two of their sons, who had already gone to America ; and it was not fear, but pressing family anxieties of this kind, that eventually led him to decide on emigration as the only solution. There were a number of farewell presents and messages.
A Note on Priestley in America