who, alas! was then in the spirit land, and not able
to greet him as he would have done had he still been a living force in
the City of Brotherly Love. However, a very prompt welcome came from the
American Philosophical Society, founded (1727) by the immortal savant,
Franklin.

The President of this venerable Society, the oldest scientific Society
in the Western hemisphere, was the renowned astronomer, David
Rittenhouse, who said for himself and his associates:

THE American Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia for
promoting useful knowledge, offer you their sincere
congratulations on your safe arrival in this country. Associated
for the purposes of extending and disseminating those improvements
in the sciences and the arts, which most conduce to substantial
happiness of Man, the Society felicitate themselves and their
country, that your talents and virtues, have been transferred to
this Republic. Considering you as an illustrious member of this
institution: Your colleagues anticipate your aid, in zealously
promoting the objects which unite them; as a virtuous man,
possessing eminent and useful acquirements, they contemplate with
pleasure the accession of such worth to the American Commonwealth,
and looking forward to your future character of a citizen of this,
your adopted country, they rejoice in greeting, as such, an
enlightened Republican.

In this free and happy country, those unalienable rights, which
the Author of Nature committed to man as a sacred deposit, have
been secured: Here, we have been enabled, under the favour of
Divine Providence, to establish a government of Laws, and not of
Men; a government, which secures to its citizens equal Rights, and
equal Liberty, and which offers an asylum to the good, to the
persecuted, and to the oppressed of other climes.

May you long enjoy every blessing which an elevated and highly
cultivated mind, a pure conscience, and a free country are capable
of bestowing.

And, in return, Priestley remarked.

IT is with peculiar satisfaction that I receive the
congratulations of my brethren of the Philosophical Society in
this City, on my arrival in this country. It is, in great part,
for the sake of pursuing our common studies without molestation,
though for the present you will allow, with far