Richard Price
Encyclopedia
Richard Price was a British
moral philosopher and preacher
in the tradition of English Dissenters
, and a political pamphleteer
, active in radical, republican, and liberal causes such as the American Revolution
. He fostered connections between a large number of people, including writers of the Constitution of the United States. He spent most of his adult life as minister of Newington Green Unitarian Church
, where possibly the congregant he most influenced was early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft
, who extended his ideas on the egalitarianism
inherent in the spirit of the French Revolution
to encompass women's rights
as well. In addition to his work as a moral and political philosopher, he also wrote on issues of statistics
and finance
, and was inducted into the Royal Society
for these contributions.
Price was born in Tynton, Llangeinor
, Glamorgan
, the son of a Dissenting minister. Educated privately and at a dissenting academy in London
, he became chaplain
and companion to a Mr Streatfield at Stoke Newington
, then a village just north of London but now considered part of Inner London
. Streatfield's death and that of an uncle in 1757 improved his circumstances, and on 16 June 1757 he married Sarah Blundell, originally of Belgrave in Leicestershire
. The following year they moved to Newington Green
, and took up residence in No. 54 the Green, in the middle of a terrace even then a hundred years old. (The building still survives as London's oldest brick terrace, dated 1658.)
such as Benjamin Franklin
, Thomas Jefferson
, and Thomas Paine
; other American politicians such as John Adams
, who later became the second president of the United States
, and his wife Abigail
; British politicians such as Lord Lyttleton
, the Earl of Shelburne
, Earl Stanhope
(known as "Citizen Stanhope"), and even the Prime Minister
William Pitt
; philosophers David Hume
and Adam Smith
; agitators such as prison reformer John Howard
, gadfly John Horne Tooke
, and husband and wife John and Ann Jebb
, who between them campaigned on expansion of the franchise, opposition to the war with America
, support for the French Revolution
, abolitionism
, and an end to legal discrimination against Roman Catholics; writers such as poet and banker Samuel Rogers
; and clergyman-mathematician Thomas Bayes
, of Bayes' theorem
.
Price was fortunate in forming close friendships amongst his neighbours and congregants. One was Thomas Rogers, father of the above-named Samuel Rogers, a merchant turned banker who had married into a long-established Dissenting family and lived at No. 56 the Green. More than once, Price and the elder Rogers rode on horseback to Wales. Another was the Rev. James Burgh
, author of The Dignity of Human Nature and Thoughts on Education, who opened his Dissenting Academy on the green in 1750 and sent his pupils to Price's sermons. Price, Rogers, and Burgh formed a dining club, eating at each other's houses in rotation.
And there were many at a distance who acknowledged their debt to Price, such as the Unitarian theologians William Ellery Channing
and Theophilus Lindsey
, and the formidable polymath
and Dissenting clergyman, Joseph Priestley
, discoverer of oxygen. When Priestley's support of dissent
led to the riots named after him
, he fled Birmingham
and headed for the sanctuary of Newington Green, where Rogers took him in. Price and Priestley took the most opposite views on morals and metaphysics
. In 1778 appeared a published correspondence between these two liberal theologian
s on the subjects of materialism
and necessity, wherein Price maintains, in opposition to Priestley, the free agency of man and the unity and immateriality of the human soul.
of the Trinity
, and this remained the case until the passage of the 1813 Act
. Nonetheless, various theologians and clergymen had begun to voice non-Trinitarian views. Theophilus Lindsey
resigned his living and moved to London to create an avowedly Unitarian congregation, and Price played a key role in finding and securing the premises for this, which became Essex Street Chapel
. Both Price and Priestley were what would now vaguely be called "Unitarians
", though they occupied respectively the extreme right and the extreme left position of that school. Indeed, Price's opinions would seem to have been rather Arian
than Socinian
.
; this raised his reputation and helped determine the direction of his career. It was, however, as a writer on financial and political questions that Price became widely known. In 1769, in a letter to Benjamin Franklin
, he wrote some observations on the expectation of lives, the increase of mankind, and the population of London, which were published in the Philosophical Transactions of that year; in May 1770 he presented to the Royal Society
a paper on the proper method of calculating the values of contingent reversions. The publication of these papers is said to have helped draw attention to the inadequate calculations on which many insurance and benefit societies had recently been formed. In 1769 Price received the honorary degree of D.D. from the University of Glasgow
. In 1771 he published his Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the National Debt (ed. 1772 and 1774). This pamphlet excited considerable controversy, and is supposed to have influenced William Pitt the Younger
in re-establishing the sinking fund
for the extinction of the national debt, created by Robert Walpole
in 1716 and abolished in 1733. The means proposed for the extinction of the debt are described by Lord Overstone as "a sort of hocus-pocus machinery," supposed to work "without loss to any one," and consequently unsound.
colonies. He had from the first been strongly opposed to the war, and in 1776 he published a pamphlet entitled Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America. Sixty thousand copies of this work were sold within a few days; a cheap edition was soon issued which sold twice as many copies; the pamphlet was extolled by one set of politicians and abused by another; amongst its critics were Dr Markham, archbishop of York, John Wesley
, and Edmund Burke
; and Price rapidly became one of the best known men in England. He was presented with the freedom of the city
of London, and it is said that his pamphlet had no inconsiderable share in determining the Americans to declare their independence. A second pamphlet on the war with America, the debts of Great Britain
, and kindred topics followed in the spring of 1777. His name thus became identified with the cause of American independence. He was the intimate friend of Franklin; he corresponded with Turgot
; and in the winter of 1778 he was invited by Congress to go to America and assist in the financial administration of the states. This offer he refused from unwillingness to quit his own country and his family connections. In 1781 he, solely with George Washington
, received the degree of Doctor of Laws from Yale College
.
The support Price gave to the revolt of the colonies of British North America
made his name as a famous or notorious preacher. Price rejected traditional Christian
notions of original sin
and moral punishment, preaching the perfectibility of human nature, and he wrote on theological questions. However, his interests were wide-ranging, and during the decades he spent as minister of NGUC
, he also wrote on finance
, economics
, probability
, and life insurance
, being inducted into the Royal Society
in recognition of his work. On the 101st anniversary of the Glorious Revolution
, he preached a sermon
entitled "A Discourse on the Love of our Country," thus igniting a so-called "pamphlet war" known as the Revolution Controversy
, furiously debating the issues raised by the French Revolution
. Burke's rebuttal "Reflections on the Revolution in France
" attacked Price, whose friends Paine and Wollstonecraft leapt into the fray to defend their mentor. The reputation of Price for speaking without fear of the government on these political and philosophical matters drew huge crowds to the church, and were published and sold as pamphlets
(i.e. publications easily printed and circulated).
The pamphlets on the American War made Price famous. He preached to crowded congregations, and, when Lord Shelburne acceded to power, not only was he offered the post of private secretary to the premier, but it is said that one of the paragraphs in the king's speech was suggested by him and even inserted in his words. In 1786 Mrs Price died. There were no children by the marriage, his own health was failing, and the remainder of his life appears to have been clouded by solitude and dejection. The progress of the French Revolution
alone cheered him. On the 19 April 1791 he died, worn out with suffering and disease.
Arguably the congregant Price most influenced was the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft
, who moved her fledgling school for girls from Islington
to the Green in 1784, with the help of a fairy godmother whose good auspices found her a house to rent and twenty students to fill it. Her patron – or matron – was the well-off Mrs Burgh, widow of Price's friend. The new arrival attended services at NGUC: she was a life-long Anglican, but, in keeping with the church's and Price's ethos of logical enquiry and individual conscience, believers of all kinds were welcomed without any expectation of conversion. The approach of these Rational Dissenters appealed to Wollstonecraft: they were hard-working, humane, critical but uncynical, and respectful towards women, and in her hour of need proved kinder to her than her own family. Price is believed to have secretly helped her with money to go to Lisbon
to aid her dear friend Fanny Blood. She, an unmarried woman making her own way in the world, was marginal to the dominant society in just the same way that the Dissenters were.
Wollstonecraft was then a young schoolmistress, as yet unpublished, but Price saw something in her worth fostering, and became a friend and mentor. Through the minister she met the great humanitarian and radical publisher Joseph Johnson
, who was to guide her career and serve as a father figure. The ideas Wollstonecraft ingested from the sermons at NGUC pushed her towards a political awakening. A couple of years after she had had to leave Newington Green, these seeds germinated into A Vindication of the Rights of Men
, a response to Burke
's denunciation of the French Revolution and attack on Price. In 1792 she published the work for which she is best remembered, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
, in the spirit of rationalism extending Price's arguments about equality to women: Tomalin
argues that just as the Dissenters were "excluded as a class from education and civil rights by a lazy-minded majority", so too were women, and the "character defects of both groups" could be attributed to this discrimination. Price appears 14 times in William Godwin's
diary, Wollstonecraft's later husband.
. The Review of the Principal Questions in Morals (1757, 3rd ed. revised 1787) contains his whole theory. It is divided into ten chapters, the first of which, though a small part of the whole, completes his demonstration of ethical theory. The remaining chapters investigate details of minor importance, and are especially interesting as showing his relation to Butler and Kant
(ch. iii. and ch. vii.). The work is professedly a refutation of Francis Hutcheson
, but is rather constructive than polemical. The theory he propounds is closely allied to that of Cudworth
, but is interesting mainly in comparison with the subsequent theories of Kant
.
Right and wrong belong to actions in themselves. By this he means, not that the ethical value of actions is independent of their motive and end (see ch. vi), but rather that it is unaffected by consequences, and that it is more or less invariable for intelligent beings. II. This ethical value is perceived by reason or understanding (which, unlike Kant, he does not distinguish), which intuitively recognizes fitness or congruity between actions, agents and total circumstances. Arguing that ethical judgment is an act of discrimination, he endeavours to invalidate the doctrine of the moral sense. Yet, in denying the importance of the emotions in moral judgment, he is driven back to the admission that right actions must be "grateful" to us; that, in fact, moral approbation includes both an act of the understanding and an emotion of the heart. Still it remains true that reason alone, in its highest development, would be a sufficient guide. In this conclusion he is in close agreement with Kant; reason
is the arbiter, and right is (1) not a matter of the emotions and (2) no relative to imperfect human nature. Price's main point of difference with Cudworth
is that while Cudworth regards the moral criterion as a vanua or modification of the mind, existing in gere and developed by circumstances, Price regards it as acquired from the contemplation of actions, but acquired necessarily, immediately intuitively. In his view of disinterested action (ch. iii.) he adds nothing to Butler. Happiness he regards as the only end, conceivable by us, of divine Providence, but it is a happiness wholly dependent upon rectitude. Virtue tends always to happiness, and in the end must produce it in its perfect form.
Price was a friend of the mathematician
and clergyman Thomas Bayes
. He edited Bayes' most famous work "An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances
" which contains Bayes' Theorem
, one of the most fundamental theorem
s of probability theory
, and arranged for its posthumous publication. Price wrote an introduction to Bayes' paper which provides some of the philosophical basis of Bayesian statistics
.
Besides the above-mentioned, Price wrote an Essay on the Population of England (2nd ed., 1780) which directly influenced Thomas Robert Malthus; two Fast-day Sermons, published respectively in 1779 and 1781 ; and Observations on the importance of the American Revolution
and the means of rendering it a benefit to the World (1784). A complete list of his works is given as an appendix to Dr Priestley's Funeral Sermon. His views on the French Revolution
are denounced by Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Notices of Price's ethical system occur in James Mackintosh
's Progress of Ethical Philosophy, Jouffroy
's Introduction to Ethics, William Whewell
's History of Moral Philosophy in England; Alexander Bain
's Mental and Moral Sciences. See also T Fowler's monograph on Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. For Price's life see memoir by his nephew, William Morgan.
, he continued his afternoon sermons at NGUC. He also accepted duties at the meeting house in Old Jewry
Street in the City of London
.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
moral philosopher and preacher
Preacher
Preacher is a term for someone who preaches sermons or gives homilies. A preacher is distinct from a theologian by focusing on the communication rather than the development of doctrine. Others see preaching and theology as being intertwined...
in the tradition of English Dissenters
English Dissenters
English Dissenters were Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.They originally agitated for a wide reaching Protestant Reformation of the Established Church, and triumphed briefly under Oliver Cromwell....
, and a political pamphleteer
Pamphleteer
A pamphleteer is a historical term for someone who creates or distributes pamphlets. Pamphlets were used to broadcast the writer's opinions on an issue, for example, in order to get people to vote for their favorite politician or to articulate a particular political ideology.A famous pamphleteer...
, active in radical, republican, and liberal causes such as the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
. He fostered connections between a large number of people, including writers of the Constitution of the United States. He spent most of his adult life as minister of Newington Green Unitarian Church
Newington Green Unitarian Church
Newington Green Unitarian Church in north London is one of England's oldest Unitarian churches. It has had strong ties to political radicalism for over 300 years, and is London's oldest Nonconformist place of worship still in use...
, where possibly the congregant he most influenced was early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
, who extended his ideas on the egalitarianism
Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism is a trend of thought that favors equality of some sort among moral agents, whether persons or animals. Emphasis is placed upon the fact that equality contains the idea of equity of quality...
inherent in the spirit of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
to encompass women's rights
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
as well. In addition to his work as a moral and political philosopher, he also wrote on issues of statistics
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
and finance
Finance
"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...
, and was inducted into the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
for these contributions.
Early career
Llangeinor
Llangeinor is a small village located in the Garw Valley around 5 miles north of Bridgend in Bridgend County Borough, Wales. The entire village is now protected as part of a conservation area.-Transport:...
, Glamorgan
Glamorgan
Glamorgan or Glamorganshire is one of the thirteen historic counties and a former administrative county of Wales. It was originally an early medieval kingdom of varying boundaries known as Glywysing until taken over by the Normans as a lordship. Glamorgan is latterly represented by the three...
, the son of a Dissenting minister. Educated privately and at a dissenting academy in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, he became chaplain
Chaplain
Traditionally, a chaplain is a minister in a specialized setting such as a priest, pastor, rabbi, or imam or lay representative of a religion attached to a secular institution such as a hospital, prison, military unit, police department, university, or private chapel...
and companion to a Mr Streatfield at Stoke Newington
Stoke Newington
Stoke Newington is a district in the London Borough of Hackney. It is north-east of Charing Cross.-Boundaries:In modern terms, Stoke Newington can be roughly defined by the N16 postcode area . Its southern boundary with Dalston is quite ill-defined too...
, then a village just north of London but now considered part of Inner London
Inner London
Inner London is the name for the group of London boroughs which form the interior part of Greater London and are surrounded by Outer London. The area was first officially defined in 1965 and for purposes such as statistics, the definition has changed over time. The terms Inner London and Central...
. Streatfield's death and that of an uncle in 1757 improved his circumstances, and on 16 June 1757 he married Sarah Blundell, originally of Belgrave in Leicestershire
Leicestershire
Leicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. It takes its name from the heavily populated City of Leicester, traditionally its administrative centre, although the City of Leicester unitary authority is today administered separately from the rest of Leicestershire...
. The following year they moved to Newington Green
Newington Green
Newington Green is an open space in north London which straddles the border between Islington and Hackney. It gives its name to the surrounding area, roughly bounded by Ball's Pond Road to the south, Petherton Road to the west, the southern section of Stoke Newington with Green Lanes-Matthias Road...
, and took up residence in No. 54 the Green, in the middle of a terrace even then a hundred years old. (The building still survives as London's oldest brick terrace, dated 1658.)
Friends and associates
In that house, or the church itself, he was visited by Founding Fathers of the United StatesFounding Fathers of the United States
The Founding Fathers of the United States of America were political leaders and statesmen who participated in the American Revolution by signing the United States Declaration of Independence, taking part in the American Revolutionary War, establishing the United States Constitution, or by some...
such as Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
, Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
, and Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
Thomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...
; other American politicians such as John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
, who later became the second president of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
, and his wife Abigail
Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams was the wife of John Adams, who was the second President of the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth...
; British politicians such as Lord Lyttleton
George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton
George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton PC , known as Sir George Lyttelton, Bt between 1751 and 1756, was a British politician and statesman and a patron of the arts.-Background and education:...
, the Earl of Shelburne
William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne
William Petty-FitzMaurice, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, KG, PC , known as The Earl of Shelburne between 1761 and 1784, by which title he is generally known to history, was an Irish-born British Whig statesman who was the first Home Secretary in 1782 and then Prime Minister 1782–1783 during the final...
, Earl Stanhope
Earl Stanhope
Earl Stanhope was a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1718 for James Stanhope, 1st Viscount Stanhope, the principal minister of King George I, with remainder to the heirs male of his body. Stanhope was the son of the Hon. Alexander Stanhope, fifth and youngest son of Philip...
(known as "Citizen Stanhope"), and even the Prime Minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
William Pitt
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham PC was a British Whig statesman who led Britain during the Seven Years' War...
; philosophers David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
and Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
; agitators such as prison reformer John Howard
John Howard (prison reformer)
John Howard was a philanthropist and the first English prison reformer.-Birth and early life:Howard was born in Lower Clapton, London. His father, also John, was a wealthy upholsterer at Smithfield Market in the city...
, gadfly John Horne Tooke
John Horne Tooke
John Horne Tooke was an English politician and philologist.-Early life and work:He was born in Newport Street, Long Acre, Westminster, the third son of John Horne, a poulterer in Newport Market. As a youth at Eton College, Tooke described his father to friends as a "turkey merchant"...
, and husband and wife John and Ann Jebb
Ann Jebb
Ann Jebb , political reformer and radical writer, was born at Ripton-Kings, Huntingdonshire, to Lady Dorothy Sherard and the Revd James Torkington. She grew up in Huntingdonshire and was probably educated at home. She married religious and political reformer John Jebb in 1764 and fully shared his...
, who between them campaigned on expansion of the franchise, opposition to the war with America
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
, support for the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, abolitionism
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
, and an end to legal discrimination against Roman Catholics; writers such as poet and banker Samuel Rogers
Samuel Rogers
Samuel Rogers was an English poet, during his lifetime one of the most celebrated, although his fame has long since been eclipsed by his Romantic colleagues and friends Wordsworth, Coleridge and Byron...
; and clergyman-mathematician Thomas Bayes
Thomas Bayes
Thomas Bayes was an English mathematician and Presbyterian minister, known for having formulated a specific case of the theorem that bears his name: Bayes' theorem...
, of Bayes' theorem
Bayes' theorem
In probability theory and applications, Bayes' theorem relates the conditional probabilities P and P. It is commonly used in science and engineering. The theorem is named for Thomas Bayes ....
.
Price was fortunate in forming close friendships amongst his neighbours and congregants. One was Thomas Rogers, father of the above-named Samuel Rogers, a merchant turned banker who had married into a long-established Dissenting family and lived at No. 56 the Green. More than once, Price and the elder Rogers rode on horseback to Wales. Another was the Rev. James Burgh
James Burgh
James Burgh was a British Whig politician whose book Political Disquisitions set out an early case for free speech and universal suffrage: In it, he writes, "All lawful authority, legislative, and executive, originates from the people." He has been judged "one of England's foremost propagandists...
, author of The Dignity of Human Nature and Thoughts on Education, who opened his Dissenting Academy on the green in 1750 and sent his pupils to Price's sermons. Price, Rogers, and Burgh formed a dining club, eating at each other's houses in rotation.
And there were many at a distance who acknowledged their debt to Price, such as the Unitarian theologians William Ellery Channing
William Ellery Channing
Dr. William Ellery Channing was the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century and, along with Andrews Norton, one of Unitarianism's leading theologians. He was known for his articulate and impassioned sermons and public speeches, and as a prominent thinker...
and Theophilus Lindsey
Theophilus Lindsey
Theophilus Lindsey was an English theologian and clergyman who founded the first avowedly Unitarian congregation in the country, at Essex Street Chapel.-Life:...
, and the formidable polymath
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
and Dissenting clergyman, Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley, FRS was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...
, discoverer of oxygen. When Priestley's support of dissent
Joseph Priestley and Dissent
Joseph Priestley was a British natural philosopher, political theorist, clergyman, theologian, and educator...
led to the riots named after him
Priestley Riots
The Priestley Riots took place from 14 July to 17 July 1791 in Birmingham, England; the rioters' main targets were religious Dissenters, most notably the politically and theologically controversial Joseph Priestley...
, he fled Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
and headed for the sanctuary of Newington Green, where Rogers took him in. Price and Priestley took the most opposite views on morals and metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
. In 1778 appeared a published correspondence between these two liberal theologian
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
s on the subjects of materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
and necessity, wherein Price maintains, in opposition to Priestley, the free agency of man and the unity and immateriality of the human soul.
Unitarianism
It was illegal to deny the Christian doctrineDoctrine
Doctrine is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the body of teachings in a branch of knowledge or belief system...
of the Trinity
Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons : the Father, the Son , and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial . Put another way, the three persons of the Trinity are of one being...
, and this remained the case until the passage of the 1813 Act
Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813
The Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom...
. Nonetheless, various theologians and clergymen had begun to voice non-Trinitarian views. Theophilus Lindsey
Theophilus Lindsey
Theophilus Lindsey was an English theologian and clergyman who founded the first avowedly Unitarian congregation in the country, at Essex Street Chapel.-Life:...
resigned his living and moved to London to create an avowedly Unitarian congregation, and Price played a key role in finding and securing the premises for this, which became Essex Street Chapel
Essex Street Chapel
Essex Street Chapel, also known as Essex Church, is a Unitarian place of worship in London. It was the first church in England set up with this doctrine, and was established at a time when Dissenters still faced legal threat...
. Both Price and Priestley were what would now vaguely be called "Unitarians
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
", though they occupied respectively the extreme right and the extreme left position of that school. Indeed, Price's opinions would seem to have been rather Arian
Arianism
Arianism is the theological teaching attributed to Arius , a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt, concerning the relationship of the entities of the Trinity and the precise nature of the Son of God as being a subordinate entity to God the Father...
than Socinian
Socinianism
Socinianism is a system of Christian doctrine named for Fausto Sozzini , which was developed among the Polish Brethren in the Minor Reformed Church of Poland during the 15th and 16th centuries and embraced also by the Unitarian Church of Transylvania during the same period...
.
Publications
In 1744 Price published a volume of sermons, which gained him the acquaintance of Lord ShelburneWilliam Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne
William Petty-FitzMaurice, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, KG, PC , known as The Earl of Shelburne between 1761 and 1784, by which title he is generally known to history, was an Irish-born British Whig statesman who was the first Home Secretary in 1782 and then Prime Minister 1782–1783 during the final...
; this raised his reputation and helped determine the direction of his career. It was, however, as a writer on financial and political questions that Price became widely known. In 1769, in a letter to Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
, he wrote some observations on the expectation of lives, the increase of mankind, and the population of London, which were published in the Philosophical Transactions of that year; in May 1770 he presented to the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
a paper on the proper method of calculating the values of contingent reversions. The publication of these papers is said to have helped draw attention to the inadequate calculations on which many insurance and benefit societies had recently been formed. In 1769 Price received the honorary degree of D.D. from the University of Glasgow
University of Glasgow
The University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...
. In 1771 he published his Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the National Debt (ed. 1772 and 1774). This pamphlet excited considerable controversy, and is supposed to have influenced William Pitt the Younger
William Pitt the Younger
William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...
in re-establishing the sinking fund
Sinking fund
A sinking fund is a fund established by a government agency or business for the purpose of reducing debt by repaying or purchasing outstanding loans and securities held against the entity. It helps keep the borrower liquid so it can repay the bondholder....
for the extinction of the national debt, created by Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....
in 1716 and abolished in 1733. The means proposed for the extinction of the debt are described by Lord Overstone as "a sort of hocus-pocus machinery," supposed to work "without loss to any one," and consequently unsound.
The American and French Revolutions
Price then turned his attention to the question of the AmericanUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
colonies. He had from the first been strongly opposed to the war, and in 1776 he published a pamphlet entitled Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America. Sixty thousand copies of this work were sold within a few days; a cheap edition was soon issued which sold twice as many copies; the pamphlet was extolled by one set of politicians and abused by another; amongst its critics were Dr Markham, archbishop of York, John Wesley
John Wesley
John Wesley was a Church of England cleric and Christian theologian. Wesley is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, as founding the Methodist movement which began when he took to open-air preaching in a similar manner to George Whitefield...
, and Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
; and Price rapidly became one of the best known men in England. He was presented with the freedom of the city
Freedom of the City
Freedom of the City is an honour bestowed by some municipalities in Australia, Canada, Ireland, France, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, Gibraltar and Rhodesia to esteemed members of its community and to organisations to be honoured, often for service to the community;...
of London, and it is said that his pamphlet had no inconsiderable share in determining the Americans to declare their independence. A second pamphlet on the war with America, the debts of Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
, and kindred topics followed in the spring of 1777. His name thus became identified with the cause of American independence. He was the intimate friend of Franklin; he corresponded with Turgot
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune
Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune , often referred to as Turgot, was a French economist and statesman. Turgot was a student of Francois Quesnay and as such belonged to the Physiocratic school of economic thought...
; and in the winter of 1778 he was invited by Congress to go to America and assist in the financial administration of the states. This offer he refused from unwillingness to quit his own country and his family connections. In 1781 he, solely with George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
, received the degree of Doctor of Laws from Yale College
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
.
The support Price gave to the revolt of the colonies of British North America
British North America
British North America is a historical term. It consisted of the colonies and territories of the British Empire in continental North America after the end of the American Revolutionary War and the recognition of American independence in 1783.At the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775 the British...
made his name as a famous or notorious preacher. Price rejected traditional Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
notions of original sin
Original sin
Original sin is, according to a Christian theological doctrine, humanity's state of sin resulting from the Fall of Man. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred...
and moral punishment, preaching the perfectibility of human nature, and he wrote on theological questions. However, his interests were wide-ranging, and during the decades he spent as minister of NGUC
Newington Green Unitarian Church
Newington Green Unitarian Church in north London is one of England's oldest Unitarian churches. It has had strong ties to political radicalism for over 300 years, and is London's oldest Nonconformist place of worship still in use...
, he also wrote on finance
Finance
"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...
, economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, probability
Probability
Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...
, and life insurance
Life insurance
Life insurance is a contract between an insurance policy holder and an insurer, where the insurer promises to pay a designated beneficiary a sum of money upon the death of the insured person. Depending on the contract, other events such as terminal illness or critical illness may also trigger...
, being inducted into the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
in recognition of his work. On the 101st anniversary of the Glorious Revolution
Glorious Revolution
The Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688, is the overthrow of King James II of England by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau...
, he preached a sermon
Sermon
A sermon is an oration by a prophet or member of the clergy. Sermons address a Biblical, theological, religious, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law or behavior within both past and present contexts...
entitled "A Discourse on the Love of our Country," thus igniting a so-called "pamphlet war" known as the Revolution Controversy
Revolution Controversy
The Revolution Controversy was a British debate over the French Revolution, lasting from 1789 through 1795. A pamphlet war began in earnest after the publication of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France , which surprisingly supported the French aristocracy...
, furiously debating the issues raised by the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
. Burke's rebuttal "Reflections on the Revolution in France
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Reflections on the Revolution in France , by Edmund Burke, is one of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution...
" attacked Price, whose friends Paine and Wollstonecraft leapt into the fray to defend their mentor. The reputation of Price for speaking without fear of the government on these political and philosophical matters drew huge crowds to the church, and were published and sold as pamphlets
Pamphleteer
A pamphleteer is a historical term for someone who creates or distributes pamphlets. Pamphlets were used to broadcast the writer's opinions on an issue, for example, in order to get people to vote for their favorite politician or to articulate a particular political ideology.A famous pamphleteer...
(i.e. publications easily printed and circulated).
The pamphlets on the American War made Price famous. He preached to crowded congregations, and, when Lord Shelburne acceded to power, not only was he offered the post of private secretary to the premier, but it is said that one of the paragraphs in the king's speech was suggested by him and even inserted in his words. In 1786 Mrs Price died. There were no children by the marriage, his own health was failing, and the remainder of his life appears to have been clouded by solitude and dejection. The progress of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
alone cheered him. On the 19 April 1791 he died, worn out with suffering and disease.
Influence on Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
, who moved her fledgling school for girls from Islington
Islington
Islington is a neighbourhood in Greater London, England and forms the central district of the London Borough of Islington. It is a district of Inner London, spanning from Islington High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the area around the busy Upper Street...
to the Green in 1784, with the help of a fairy godmother whose good auspices found her a house to rent and twenty students to fill it. Her patron – or matron – was the well-off Mrs Burgh, widow of Price's friend. The new arrival attended services at NGUC: she was a life-long Anglican, but, in keeping with the church's and Price's ethos of logical enquiry and individual conscience, believers of all kinds were welcomed without any expectation of conversion. The approach of these Rational Dissenters appealed to Wollstonecraft: they were hard-working, humane, critical but uncynical, and respectful towards women, and in her hour of need proved kinder to her than her own family. Price is believed to have secretly helped her with money to go to Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
to aid her dear friend Fanny Blood. She, an unmarried woman making her own way in the world, was marginal to the dominant society in just the same way that the Dissenters were.
Wollstonecraft was then a young schoolmistress, as yet unpublished, but Price saw something in her worth fostering, and became a friend and mentor. Through the minister she met the great humanitarian and radical publisher Joseph Johnson
Joseph Johnson (publisher)
Joseph Johnson was an influential 18th-century London bookseller and publisher. His publications covered a wide variety of genres and a broad spectrum of opinions on important issues...
, who was to guide her career and serve as a father figure. The ideas Wollstonecraft ingested from the sermons at NGUC pushed her towards a political awakening. A couple of years after she had had to leave Newington Green, these seeds germinated into A Vindication of the Rights of Men
A Vindication of the Rights of Men
A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; Occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in France is a political pamphlet, written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, which attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism...
, a response to Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
's denunciation of the French Revolution and attack on Price. In 1792 she published the work for which she is best remembered, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects , written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th...
, in the spirit of rationalism extending Price's arguments about equality to women: Tomalin
Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin is an English biographer and journalist. She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge.She was literary editor of the New Statesman and of the Sunday Times, and has written several noted biographies...
argues that just as the Dissenters were "excluded as a class from education and civil rights by a lazy-minded majority", so too were women, and the "character defects of both groups" could be attributed to this discrimination. Price appears 14 times in William Godwin's
William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
diary, Wollstonecraft's later husband.
Works on ethics
Much of Price's most important philosophical work was in the region of ethicsEthics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
. The Review of the Principal Questions in Morals (1757, 3rd ed. revised 1787) contains his whole theory. It is divided into ten chapters, the first of which, though a small part of the whole, completes his demonstration of ethical theory. The remaining chapters investigate details of minor importance, and are especially interesting as showing his relation to Butler and Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
(ch. iii. and ch. vii.). The work is professedly a refutation of Francis Hutcheson
Francis Hutcheson (philosopher)
Francis Hutcheson was a philosopher born in Ireland to a family of Scottish Presbyterians who became one of the founding fathers of the Scottish Enlightenment....
, but is rather constructive than polemical. The theory he propounds is closely allied to that of Cudworth
Ralph Cudworth
Ralph Cudworth was an English philosopher, the leader of the Cambridge Platonists.-Life:Born at Aller, Somerset, he was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, gaining his MA and becoming a Fellow of Emmanuel in 1639. In 1645, he became master of Clare Hall and professor of Hebrew...
, but is interesting mainly in comparison with the subsequent theories of Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
.
Right and wrong belong to actions in themselves. By this he means, not that the ethical value of actions is independent of their motive and end (see ch. vi), but rather that it is unaffected by consequences, and that it is more or less invariable for intelligent beings. II. This ethical value is perceived by reason or understanding (which, unlike Kant, he does not distinguish), which intuitively recognizes fitness or congruity between actions, agents and total circumstances. Arguing that ethical judgment is an act of discrimination, he endeavours to invalidate the doctrine of the moral sense. Yet, in denying the importance of the emotions in moral judgment, he is driven back to the admission that right actions must be "grateful" to us; that, in fact, moral approbation includes both an act of the understanding and an emotion of the heart. Still it remains true that reason alone, in its highest development, would be a sufficient guide. In this conclusion he is in close agreement with Kant; reason
Reason
Reason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...
is the arbiter, and right is (1) not a matter of the emotions and (2) no relative to imperfect human nature. Price's main point of difference with Cudworth
Ralph Cudworth
Ralph Cudworth was an English philosopher, the leader of the Cambridge Platonists.-Life:Born at Aller, Somerset, he was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, gaining his MA and becoming a Fellow of Emmanuel in 1639. In 1645, he became master of Clare Hall and professor of Hebrew...
is that while Cudworth regards the moral criterion as a vanua or modification of the mind, existing in gere and developed by circumstances, Price regards it as acquired from the contemplation of actions, but acquired necessarily, immediately intuitively. In his view of disinterested action (ch. iii.) he adds nothing to Butler. Happiness he regards as the only end, conceivable by us, of divine Providence, but it is a happiness wholly dependent upon rectitude. Virtue tends always to happiness, and in the end must produce it in its perfect form.
Other works
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
and clergyman Thomas Bayes
Thomas Bayes
Thomas Bayes was an English mathematician and Presbyterian minister, known for having formulated a specific case of the theorem that bears his name: Bayes' theorem...
. He edited Bayes' most famous work "An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances
An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances
An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances is a work on the mathematical theory of probability by the Reverend Thomas Bayes, published in 1763, two years after its author's death. It included a statement of a special case of what is now called Bayes' theorem. In 18th-century...
" which contains Bayes' Theorem
Bayes' theorem
In probability theory and applications, Bayes' theorem relates the conditional probabilities P and P. It is commonly used in science and engineering. The theorem is named for Thomas Bayes ....
, one of the most fundamental theorem
Theorem
In mathematics, a theorem is a statement that has been proven on the basis of previously established statements, such as other theorems, and previously accepted statements, such as axioms...
s of probability theory
Probability theory
Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with analysis of random phenomena. The central objects of probability theory are random variables, stochastic processes, and events: mathematical abstractions of non-deterministic events or measured quantities that may either be single...
, and arranged for its posthumous publication. Price wrote an introduction to Bayes' paper which provides some of the philosophical basis of Bayesian statistics
Bayesian statistics
Bayesian statistics is that subset of the entire field of statistics in which the evidence about the true state of the world is expressed in terms of degrees of belief or, more specifically, Bayesian probabilities...
.
Besides the above-mentioned, Price wrote an Essay on the Population of England (2nd ed., 1780) which directly influenced Thomas Robert Malthus; two Fast-day Sermons, published respectively in 1779 and 1781 ; and Observations on the importance of the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
and the means of rendering it a benefit to the World (1784). A complete list of his works is given as an appendix to Dr Priestley's Funeral Sermon. His views on the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
are denounced by Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Notices of Price's ethical system occur in James Mackintosh
James Mackintosh
Sir James Mackintosh was a Scottish jurist, politician and historian. His studies and sympathies embraced many interests. He was trained as a doctor and barrister, and worked also as a journalist, judge, administrator, professor, philosopher and politician.-Early life:Mackintosh was born at...
's Progress of Ethical Philosophy, Jouffroy
Théodore Simon Jouffroy
Théodore Simon Jouffroy was a French philosopher.He was born at Les Pontets, Franche-Comté, département of Doubs. In his tenth year, his father, a tax-gatherer, sent him to an uncle at Pontarlier, under whom he began his classical studies...
's Introduction to Ethics, William Whewell
William Whewell
William Whewell was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.-Life and career:Whewell was born in Lancaster...
's History of Moral Philosophy in England; Alexander Bain
Alexander Bain
Alexander Bain was a Scottish philosopher and educationalist in the British school of empiricism who was a prominent and innovative figure in the fields of psychology, linguistics, logic, moral philosophy and education reform...
's Mental and Moral Sciences. See also T Fowler's monograph on Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. For Price's life see memoir by his nephew, William Morgan.
Later life
Even when, in 1770, Price became morning preacher at the Gravel Pit Chapel in HackneyHackney (parish)
Hackney was a parish in the historic county of Middlesex. The parish church of St John-at-Hackney was built in 1789, replacing the nearby former 16th century parish church dedicated to St Augustine . The original tower of that church was retained to hold the bells until the new church could be...
, he continued his afternoon sermons at NGUC. He also accepted duties at the meeting house in Old Jewry
Old Jewry
Old Jewry is the name of a street in the City of London, in Coleman Street Ward, linking Gresham Street with The Poultry.William the Conqueror encouraged Jews to come to England soon after the Norman Conquest; some settled in cities throughout his new domain, including in London. According to Rev....
Street in the City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
.
Further reading
- The Village that Changed the World: A History of Newington Green London N16 by Alex Allardyce. Newington Green Action Group: 2008.
- Chapter titles: Beginnings, Kings and Treason; Dissenters, Academies and Castaways; The Chaste Old Bachelor of Newington Green; Enlightenment, Revolutions and Poets; Development, Destruction and Renewal.
- Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft by Lyndall Gordon. Little, Brown: 2005.
- Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft by Diane Jacobs. Simon & Schuster: 2001.
- Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination by Barbara Taylor. CUP: 2003.
- Trust in Freedom: The Story of Newington Green Unitarian Church 1708–1958 by Michael Thorncroft. Privately printed for church trustees, 1958.
- Chapter titles: The Fertile Soil; The Church is Built; The Early Years (1714–1758); The Age of Richard Price; New Causes for Old; The Ideal of Service; The Lights Go Out; The Present Day.
- The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft by Claire Tomalin. Weidenfeld & Nicolson: 1974.
External links
- MacTutor biography
- Royal Society certificate of election
- Readable version of Price's Review of the Principal Questions of Morals
- Price's Observations on Civil Liberty and the Justice and Policy of the War with America
- Price's Observations on reversionary payments on schemes for providing annuities for widows, and for persons in old age; on the method of calculating the values of assurances on lives; and on the national debt : to which are added four essays ... also an appendix ..., published in 1771.