May you, Sir, possess and enjoy, here, uninterrupted contentment and happiness, and may your valuable life be continued a farther blessing to mankind.
And in his answer Dr. Priestley remarked:
I THINK myself greatly honoured in being congratulated on my arrival in this country by a Society of persons whose studies bear some relation to my own. To continue, without fear of molestation, on account of the most open profession of any sentiments, civil or religious, those pursuits which you are sensible have for their object the advantage of all mankind, (being, as you justly observe, "necessary to the ornament and utility of human life") is my principal motive for leaving a country in which that tranquility and sense of security which scientificial pursuits require, cannot be had; and I am happy to find here, persons who are engaged in the same pursuits, and who have the just sense that you discover of their truly enviable situation.
As a climax to greetings extended in the City of New York, The Republican Natives of Great Britain and Ireland resident in that city said,
WE, the Republican natives of Great Britain and Ireland, resident in the city of New York, embrace, with the highest satisfac
tion, the opportunity which your arrival in this city presents, of bearing our testimony to your character and virtue and of expressing our joy that you come among us in circumstances of such good health and spirits.
We have beheld with the keenest sensibility, the unparallelled persecutions which attended you in your native country, and have sympathized with you under all their variety and extent. In the firm hope, that you are now completely removed from the effects of every species of intolerance, we most sincerely congratulate you.
After a fruitless opposition to a corrupt and tyrannical government, many of us have, like you, sought freedom and protection in the United States of America; but to this we have all been principally induced, from the full persuasion, that a republican representative government, was not merely best adapted to promote human happiness, but that it is the only rational system worthy the wisdom of man to project, or to which his reason should assent.
Participating in the many blessings which the government of this country is calculated to