DR. PRIESTLEY'S literary character may be viewed in the different lights of a natural philosopher, of a metaphysician, of an ecclesiastical historian, of a defender of religion in general, and of unitarianism in particular, and as an author in the wide field of miscellaneous literature. But there is another aspect in which he may be considered; the result of a few pages indeed, but of equal importance in my opinion with any or with all of these, viz. as a writer on the theory of politics: a subject in which the developement of a simple truth in such a manner as to impress it on the mind of the public, may influence to a boundless extent the happiness of millions. I well know the obloquy and the sarcasm attached to political reformers, and I am ready to acknowledge, it is possible that the melancholy theories of the present day, which judge of the future lot of mankind upon earth, from the history of past facts, may be too well founded; that war, pestilence and famine, and vice and misery in all its hideous forms may be necessary to counteract the over increase of the human species, and make up for the difference between the arithmetical progression of subsistence, and the geometrical ratio of accumulating population. Still the philosopher will have motives to labour in devising methods for the diminution and the cure of moral and physical cal evils, at least as well founded as those of a patient, who reasonably applies the known remedies for the disease by which he is oppressed.