Richard Price

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For other people named Richard Price, see Richard Price (disambiguation).

Bayes–Price theorem
Signature

Richard Price

political reformer and pamphleteer, active in radical, republican, and liberal causes such as the French and American Revolutions. He was well-connected and fostered communication between many people, including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, Mirabeau and the Marquis de Condorcet. According to the historian John Davies, Price was "the greatest Welsh thinker of all time".[1]

Born in

Bayes–Price theorem and the field of actuarial science. He also wrote on issues of demography and finance, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society
.

Early life

52–55 Newington Green, including the houses of Price and Rogers. This is the oldest brick terrace in London.

Born on 23 February 1723,[2] Richard Price was the son of Rhys Price, a dissenting minister. His mother was Catherine Richards, his father's second wife. Richard was born at Tyn Ton, a farmhouse in the village of Llangeinor, Glamorgan, Wales.[3][4] He was educated privately, then at Neath and Pen-twyn. He studied under Vavasor Griffiths at Chancefield, Talgarth, Powys.[2]

He then moved to London, where he spent the rest of his life. He studied with

dissenting academy in Moorfields, London.[2][5] Leaving the academy in 1744, Price became chaplain and companion to George Streatfield at Stoke Newington, then a village just north of London. He also held the lectureship at Old Jewry, where Samuel Chandler was minister.[2][6] Streatfield's death and that of an uncle in 1757 improved Price's circumstances, and on 16 June 1757 he married Sarah Blundell, originally of Belgrave in Leicestershire.[7]

Newington Green congregation

In 1758, Price moved to Newington Green, and took up residence in No. 54 the Green, in the middle of a terrace that was even then a hundred years old. (The building still survives as London's oldest brick terrace, dated 1658.) Price became minister to the Newington Green meeting-house, a church that continues today as Newington Green Unitarian Church. Among the congregation were Samuel Vaughan and his family.[8] Price had Thomas Amory as preaching colleague from 1770.[9]

When, in 1770, Price became morning preacher at the Gravel Pit Chapel in Hackney, he continued his afternoon sermons at Newington Green. He also accepted duties at the meeting house in Old Jewry.

Friends and associates

Newington Green neighbours

A close friend of Price was Thomas Rogers, father of 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.[10] 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.[11] Price, Rogers, and Burgh formed a dining club, eating at each other's houses in rotation.[12] Price and Rogers joined the Society for Constitutional Information.[13]

Bowood circle

Main article: Bowood circle

The "Bowood circle" was a group of liberal intellectuals around

Lord Shelburne, and named after Bowood House, his seat in Wiltshire. Price met Shelburne in or shortly after 1767,[14] or was introduced by his wife Elizabeth Montagu, a leader of the Blue Stocking intellectual women, after the publication of his Four Dissertations in that year.[15]

In 1771, Price had Shelburne employ Thomas Jervis.[16] Another member of the circle was Benjamin Vaughan.[17] In 1772, Price recruited Joseph Priestley, who came to work for Shelburne as librarian from 1773.[18][19][20]

"Club of Honest Whigs"

The group that

Sir John Pringle were members, as were Priestley and Benjamin Vaughan.[21]

Visitors

At home, or at his church itself, Price was visited by Franklin,

John and Ann Jebb.[10]

Theologians

Test Act
repealed

Others acknowledged their debt to Price, such as the Unitarian theologians

Society for Promoting Knowledge of the Scriptures in 1783.[26]

Price and Priestley took diverging views on morals and metaphysics. In 1778 appeared a published correspondence, A Free Discussion on the Doctrines of Materialism and Philosophical Necessity. Price maintained, in opposition to Priestley, the free agency of man and the unity and immateriality of the human soul. Price's opinions were Arian, Priestley's were Socinian.[27]

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft (c. 1797)

Rational Dissenters appealed to Wollstonecraft: they were hard-working, humane, critical but uncynical, and respectful towards women,[31] and proved kinder to her than her own family.[30] Price is believed to have helped her with money to go to Lisbon, Spain, to see her close friend Fanny Blood.[32]

Wollstonecraft was then unpublished: through Price she met the radical publisher Joseph Johnson. The ideas Wollstonecraft ingested from the sermons at Newington Green pushed her towards a political awakening.[33] She later published A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), a response to Burke's denunciation of the French Revolution and attack on Price; and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), 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.[34] Price appears 14 times in the diary of William Godwin, Wollstonecraft's later husband.[35]

American Revolution

The support Price gave to the colonies of

declare their independence.[36] A second pamphlet on the war with America and the debts of Great Britain, followed in the spring of 1777.[7] Price was a consistent critic of war in general and the corrupting effects of growing government debt.[39]

Price's name became identified with the cause of American independence.

Doctor of Laws from Yale College.[7] He preached to crowded congregations, and, when Lord Shelburne became Prime Minister in 1782, he was offered the post of his private secretary. The same year he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[40] In 1785, Price was elected an international member of the American Philosophical Society.[41]

Price wrote also Observations on the importance of the American Revolution and the means of rendering it a benefit to the World (1784). Well received by Americans, it suggested that the greatest problem facing Congress was its lack of central powers.[42]

French Revolution controversy

Smelling out a Rat, a caricature of Price with Edmund Burke's vision looking over his shoulder, by James Gillray, 1790

Both Price and Priestley, who were

Corporation Act as defacing the British polity, with their restrictions on Dissenters.[50]

Burke's rebuttal in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) attacked Price, whose friends Paine and Wollstonecraft leapt into the fray to defend their mentor; William Coxe was another opponent, disagreeing with Price on interpretation of "our country".[51] In 1792 Christopher Wyvill published Defence of Dr. Price and the Reformers of England, a plea for reform and moderation.[52]

Later life

Memorial to Price in Newington Green Unitarian Church
Tomb of Price and his wife Sarah in Bunhill Fields burial ground

In 1767 Price received the honorary degree of

D.D. from the University of Aberdeen, and in 1769 another from the University of Glasgow.[2][7] In 1786 Sarah Price died, and there had been no children by the marriage.[7]

In the same year Price with other Dissenters founded

Hackney New College.[53] On 19 April 1791 Price died.[7] He was buried at Bunhill Fields
, where his funeral sermon was preached by Joseph Priestley.

His extended family included

Glamorganshire
.

Publications

In 1744 Price published a volume of sermons.[7] It was, however, as a writer on financial and political questions that Price became widely known. Price rejected traditional Christian notions of original sin and moral punishment, preaching the perfectibility of human nature,[54] and he wrote on theological questions. He also wrote on finance, economics, probability, and life insurance.

Thomas Bayes

Price was asked to become

Bayes' Theorem, one of the fundamental results of probability theory.[57] Price wrote an introduction to the paper, which provides some of the philosophical basis of Bayesian statistics. In 1765, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of his work on the legacy of Bayes.[55][58]

Demographer

Observations on reversionary payments, 1772

From about 1766 Price worked with the Society for Equitable Assurances.[2] In 1769, in a letter to Benjamin Franklin, he made some observations on life expectancy, and the population of London, which were published in the Philosophical Transactions of that year.[7] Price's views included the detrimental effects of large cities, and the need for some constraints on commerce and movement of population.[59]

In particular, Price took an interest in the figures of Franklin and

physiocrats.[64][65]

In May 1770 Price presented to the Royal Society a paper on the proper method of calculating the values of contingent reversions. His book Observations on Reversionary Payments (1771) became a classic, in use for about a century, and providing the basis for financial calculations of insurance and benefit societies, of which many had recently been formed.[55] The "Northampton table", a life table compiled by Price with data from Northampton, became standard for about a century in actuarial work. It was used by life insurance companies such as Scottish Widows and Clerical Medical.[66] It, too, overestimated mortality.[67] In consequence, it was good for the insurance business, and adverse for those purchasing annuities.[68] Price's nephew William Morgan was an actuary, and became manager of the Equitable in 1775.[15] He later wrote a memoir of Price's life.[7]

Price wrote a further Essay on the Population of England (2nd edition, 1780), which influenced Thomas Robert Malthus. Price's continuing claim in it on British depopulation was challenged by John Howlett in 1781.[69] Investigation of actual causes of ill-health began at this period, in a group of radical physicians around Priestley, including Price but centred on the Midlands and north-west: with John Aikin, Matthew Dobson, John Haygarth and Thomas Percival.[70] Of these Haygarth and Percival supplied Price with figures, to supplement those he had collected himself in Northampton parishes.[71]

Public finance

In 1771 Price 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

Lord Overstone as "a sort of hocus-pocus machinery," supposed to work "without loss to any one," and consequently unsound.[7] Price's views were attacked by John Brand in 1776.[72] When Brand returned to finance and fiscal matters, Alteration of the Constitution of the House of Commons and the Inequality of the Land Tax (1793), he used work of Price, among others.[73]

Moral philosophy

The Review of the Principal Questions in Morals (1758, 3rd ed. revised 1787) contains Price's theory of

rational intuitionism of the 20th century. He drew, among other sources, on Cicero and Panaetius, and has been labelled a "British Platonist".[76]

moral obligation.[78] Théodore Simon Jouffroy preferred Price to Cudworth, Reid and Dugald Stewart.[79] See also William Whewell's History of Moral Philosophy in England; Alexander Bain's Mental and Moral Sciences; and Thomas Fowler's monograph on Shaftesbury and Hutcheson.[7]

For Price, right and wrong belong to actions in themselves, and he rejects consequentialism. This ethical value is perceived by reason or understanding, 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 moral sense theory. He admits 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.[7]

Price's main point of difference with Cudworth is that while Cudworth regards the moral criterion as a νόημα or modification of the mind, existing in germ 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 follows Butler. Happiness he regards as the only end, conceivable by us, of

divine Providence, but it is a happiness wholly dependent on rectitude. Virtue tends always to happiness, and in the end must produce it in its perfect form.[7]

Other works

Price also wrote Fast-day Sermons, published respectively in 1779 and 1781. Throughout the American War, he preached sermons on fast-days and took the opportunity to attack Britain's coercive policies toward the colonies.[80] A complete list of his works was given as an appendix to Priestley's Funeral Sermon.[7]

Commemoration

Blue plaque commemorating Price at 54 Newington Green, erected 2023

Spray paint and laser cut stencil images of Price created by the artist Stewy were installed on the exterior wall of the John Percival Building at Cardiff University in 2022 in anticipation of the 300th anniversary of Price's birth.[81]

In February 2023, an English Heritage blue plaque in honour of Price was installed on a wall at 54 Newington Green, where he lived, and close to the Newington Green Nonconformist chapel where he was a pastor. The plaque was unveiled by newsreader and journalist Huw Edwards.[82][83][84][85] A series of events to celebrate Price's tercentenary in 2023 has been organised in Llangeinor, his place of birth, around Wales and in London.[86]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ History of Wales; Penguin; London; 1990; pp. 32–35
  2. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/22761. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  3. ^ Prior, Neil (20 April 2013). "Dr Richard Price: The Welshman who influenced US founders". BBC News. bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 24 June 2016.
  4. ^ "Richard Price of Llangeinor". Gerald Jarvis, Garw Valley Heritage Society, 16 March 2011. 15 March 2011. Retrieved 24 June 2016.
  5. ^ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1896). "Price, Richard (1723–1791)" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 46. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  6. ^ Thornbury, Walter (1878). "Old Jewry". Old and New London: Volume 1. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 16 June 2013.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Mitchell 1911, p. 314.
  8. ^ "amphilsoc.org, John Vaughan papers, 1768 – Circa 1936".
  9. ^ Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1885). "Amory, Thomas (1701–1774)" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 1. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  10. ^ a b Thorncroft, p. 15.
  11. ^ Gordon, p. 42.
  12. ^ Allardyce, p. 23.
  13. ^ English Dissent. CUP Archive. pp. 41–42. GGKEY:UGD38TZ8G4J. Retrieved 16 June 2013.
  14. ISBN 978-0871697349
    . Retrieved 16 June 2013.
  15. ^ a b Holland, p. 48.
  16. ^ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1892). "Jervis, Thomas" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 29. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  17. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/98253. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  18. ^ Rivers and Wykes, p. 38.
  19. ISBN 978-0838637517
    . Retrieved 16 June 2013.
  20. S2CID 154949610
    .
  21. ISBN 978-0754637189
    . Retrieved 16 June 2013.
  22. ^ Graham, p. 131.
  23. ISBN 978-0754663928
    . Retrieved 18 June 2013.
  24. ^ "chapter 2 The History of Essex Hall by Mortimer Rowe B.A., D.D. Lindsey Press, 1959". Archived from the original on 7 March 2012.
  25. ^ Rivers and Wykes, pp. 159, 160 note 41.
  26. ISBN 978-0275977757
    . Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  27. ISBN 978-0791467060
    . Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  28. ^ Jacobs, p. 38.
  29. ^ Gordon, p. 46.
  30. ^ a b Tomalin, p. 60.
  31. ^ Tomalin, p. 51.
  32. ^ Gordon, p. 48.
  33. ^ Gordon, pp. 51 passim.
  34. ^ Tomalin, p. 61.
  35. ^ "Person record for Price, Richard". godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  36. ^
    Plumb, J. H.
    , England in the Eighteenth Century (Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd, 1950).
  37. ISBN 978-0470756447
    . Retrieved 18 June 2013.
  38. ISBN 978-0521029872
    .
  39. doi:10.1111/1468-2281.12215
    .
  40. ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter P" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  41. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 16 December 2020.
  42. ^ Graham, p. 49.
  43. ISBN 978-0199831814
    . Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  44. ^ On Price's Discourse on the Love of Our Country, see: Rémy Duthille, "Richard Price on Patriotism and Universal Benevolence", Enlightenment and Dissent, 28 (2012), pp. 24–41.
  45. ISBN 978-0826264190
    . Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  46. ^ Graham, p. 136.
  47. ^ On the French reception of Price's Discourse and the Revolution Society, see Duthille, Rémy (2010). "1688–1789. Au carrefour des révolutions : les célébrations de la révolution anglaise de 1688 en Grande-Bretagne après 1789". In Cottret, Bernard; Henneton, Lauric (eds.). Du Bon Usage des commémorations : histoire, mémoire, identité, XVIe – XVIIIe siècles (in French). Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. pp. 107–120.
  48. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/96833. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  49. ^ Graham, p. 212.
  50. ^ Graham, p. 139.
  51. ISBN 978-0521666275
    . Retrieved 16 June 2013.
  52. ^ Graham, pp. 297–298.
  53. ^ Baker, T. F. T., ed. (1995). "Hackney: Protestant Nonconformity". A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 10: Hackney. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  54. ^ Gordon, p. 50.
  55. ^ a b c Holland, pp. 46–47.
  56. S2CID 186213794
    .
  57. ISBN 978-0791494516
    . Retrieved 16 June 2013.
  58. ISBN 978-0521409698
    . Retrieved 16 June 2013.
  59. ISBN 978-0521364904
    . Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  60. ISBN 978-0812241211
    . Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  61. ISBN 978-0521101233
    . Retrieved 18 June 2013.
  62. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2033. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  63. ISBN 978-1412827935
    . Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  64. ISBN 978-0521101233
    . Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  65. ISBN 978-1137265258
    . Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  66. ^ Wall text from Buying Security - Life Assurance, Museum on the Mound, Edinburgh.
  67. ISBN 978-0521388849
    . Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  68. ISBN 978-1412829090
    . Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  69. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/14002. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  70. ISBN 978-0856648779
    . Retrieved 18 June 2013.
  71. ISBN 978-0521101233
    . Retrieved 18 June 2013.
  72. ^ Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1886). "Brand, John (d.1808)" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 6. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  73. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/3255. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  74. ISBN 978-0521012089
    .
  75. ISBN 978-0521029872
    . Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  76. JSTOR 2709951
    .
  77. ISBN 978-0521574983
    . Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  78. ISBN 978-1417972401
    . Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  79. ISBN 978-2711618958
    . Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  80. ^ Rémy Duthille, "Dissent against the American War : The Politics of Richard Price's Sermons", in War Sermons, Gilles Teulié and Laurence Lux-Sterritt, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009, pp. 149–172.
  81. ^ "New street art stencil celebrates under-appreciated philosopher from Wales". Cardiff University/Prifysgol Caerdydd. Retrieved 30 December 2022.
  82. ^ McLaughlin, Charlotte (22 February 2023). "Huw Edwards unveils Blue Plaque to 'mathematical genius' Richard Price". Evening Standard. Retrieved 23 February 2023.
  83. ^ McLaughlin, Charlotte (22 February 2023). "Huw Edwards unveils Blue Plaque to 'mathematical genius' Richard Price". independent. Retrieved 23 February 2023.
  84. ^ "Price, Richard (1723-1791)". English Heritage. Retrieved 23 February 2023.
  85. ^ Dex, Robert (22 February 2023). "London's oldest terraced house gets Blue Plaque for preacher". Evening Standard. Retrieved 23 February 2023.
  86. ISSN 0261-3077
    . Retrieved 23 February 2023.

Attribution

References

Further reading

External links

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