less advantage,
that I left my native country, and have come to America; and a
Society of Philosophers, who will have no objection to a person on
account of his political or religious sentiments, will be as
grateful, as it will be new to me. My past conduct, I hope, will
show, that you may depend upon my zeal in promoting the valuable
objects of your institution; but you must not flatter yourself, or
me, with supposing, that, at my time of life, and with the
inconvenience attending a new and uncertain settlement, I can be
of much service to it.

I am confident, however, from what I have already seen of the
spirit of the people of this country, that it will soon appear
that Republican governments, in which every obstruction is removed
to the exertion of all kinds of talent, will be far more
favourable to science, and the arts, than any monarchical
government has ever been. The patronage to be met with there is
ever capricious, and as often employed to bear down merit as to
promote it, having for its real object, not science or anything
useful to mankind, but the mere reputation of the patron, who is
seldom any judge of science. Whereas a Public which neither
flatters nor is to be flattered will not fail in due time to
distinguish true merit and to give every encouragement that it is
proper to be given in the case. Besides by opening as you
generously do an asylum to the persecuted and "oppressed of all
climes," you will in addition to your own native stock, soon
receive a large accession of every kind of merit, philosophical
not excepted, whereby you will do yourselves great honour and
secure the most permanent advantage to the community.

Doubtless in the society of so many worthy Philadelphians, the
Priestleys were happy, for they had corresponded with not a few of them.

The longing for Northumberland became very great and one smiles on
reading that the good Doctor thought "Philadelphia by no means so
agreeable as New York ... Philadelphia would be very irksome to me....
It is only a place for business and to get money in." But in this City
he later spent much of his time.

It was about the middle of July, 1794, that the journey to
Northumberland began, and on September 14, 1794, Priestley wrote of
Northumberland "nothing can be more delightful, or more hea