o
contribute so largely to the progress of the world.

Strange reticence is shown by all Watt's historians regarding his
religious and political views. Williamson, the earliest author of his
memoirs, is full of interesting facts obtained from people in Greenock
who had known Watt well. The hesitation shown by him as to Watt's
orthodoxy in his otherwise highly eulogistic tribute, attracts
attention. He says:

We could desire to know more of the state of those affections
which are more purely spiritual by their nature and origin--his
disposition to those supreme truths of Revelation, which alone
really elevate and purify the soul. In the absence of much
information of a very positive kind in regard to such points of
character and life, we instinctively revert in a case like this
to the principles and maxims of an infantile and early training.
Remembering the piety portrayed in the ancestors of this great
man, one cannot but cling to the hope that his many virtues
reposed on a substratum of more than merely moral excellence.
Let us cherish the hope that the calm which rested on the spirit
of the pilgrim ... was one that caught its radiance from a far
higher sphere than that of the purest human philosophy.

Watt's breaking of the Sabbath before recorded must have seemed to that
stern Calvinist a heinous sin, justifying grave doubts of Watt's
spiritual condition, his "moral excellence" to the contrary
notwithstanding. Williamson's estimate of moral excellence had recently
been described by Burns:

But then, nae thanks to him for a' that,
Nae godly symptom ye can ca' that,
It's naething but a milder feature
Of our poor sinfu' corrupt nature.
Ye'll get the best o' moral works,
Many black gentoos and pagan works,
Or hunters wild on Ponotaxi
Wha never heard of orthodoxy.

Williamson's doubts had much stronger foundation in Watt's
non-attendance at church, for, as we shall see from his letter to DeLuc,
July, 1788, he had never attended the "meeting-house" (dissenting
church) in Birmingham altho he claimed to be still a member of the
Presbyterian body in declining the sheriffalty.

It seems probable that Watt, in his theological views, like Priestley
and others of the Lunar Society, was in advance of his age, and more or
less in accord with Burns, who was then astonishing his countrymen.
Perhaps he had forstalled Dean Stanley's advice in