Richard Price (1723–91) carries forward the intellectualist tradition in morals. Of the earlier English moralists, he most resembles Cudworth. He was an intimate friend of Priestley; but in a correspondence between them, published in 1778, Price appears as the champion of free-will and of the unity and immateriality of the human soul. Among his friends was Franklin, to whom he addressed some observations on statistical questions published in the “Philosophical Transactions,” 1769. His “Appeal to the People on the Subject of the National Debt” (1771) is supposed to have influenced Pitt in re-establishing the sinking fund created by Walpole in 1716 and abolished in 1733. In his ethical treatise entitled “Review of the Principal Questions in Morals” (1757), he maintains against Hutcheson that ideas of right and wrong are perceived by the reason, or understanding, and not by a “sense.”
Personal
The Corporation of London—then, as in so many parts of its previous history, a really popular body, representative of the best Liberal feeling of the time—presented him with the freedom of the city in a gold box, in “testimony of their approbation of his principles and of the high sense they entertained of the excellence of his observations on the justice and policy of the war with America.” Fame brought its inconveniences together with its pleasures. Anonymous letters were sent threatening his life, and he was obliged to decline correspondence with Dr. Franklin on the ground that he had become so marked and obnoxious that prudence required him to be extremely cautious. The populace, however, loved and reverenced the courageous advocate of popular rights. As he rode in the streets of London, on his old white horse blind in one eye, clothed, as Rogers remembered him, “in a great coat and black spatter dashes,” Rogers says that, like Demosthenes, he was often diverted by hearing the carmen and orange-women say, “There goes Dr. Price!” “Make way for Dr. Price!” The seriousness and gentle mildness of his character surprised those who only knew him from his works. When the Duchess of Bedford met him, at her own request, at Shelburne House, his quiet aspect and unassuming manners caused her great astonishment. “I expected to meet a Colossus,” she afterwards said, “with an eye like Mars, to threaten and command.” Gibbon is reported to have expressed similar surprise when he met him in Mr. Cadell’s shop. The services he had rendered to freedom were acknowledged in France and the United States, and in most unexpected quarters at home. Congress passed a resolution inviting him to become a citizen of the United States, and to assist them in the regulation of their finances. In later years Turgot corresponded with him, Pitt repeatedly consulted him on great questions of national finance, and a speech of his in proposing the toast of union between England and France was read twice in the National Assembly, the members standing. He was one day at the Bar of the House of Lords, when the Duke of Cumberland came up and told him he had read his “Essay on Civil Liberty” till he was blind. “It is remarkable,” replied Lord Ashburton, who was standing near, “that your royal highness should have been blinded by a book which has opened the eyes of all mankind.”
If a man could be judged by his friends, Price’s deserts would be high. He was intimate with Benjamin Franklin and John Howard; he corresponded with Hume and Turgot. He was visited by Lyttelton, Shelbourne, and Mrs. Montague. The now nearly-forgotten Mrs. Chapone has written high praise of him in the character of “Simplicius” (“Miscellanies,” Essay I.); Simplicius is modest, learned and candid. Nevertheless he has not left a name worthy to be called great in our literature. He was a man of vigorous, independent judgment, who did good public service in his generation. He stimulated discussion on philosophical, theological, and political questions, and showed taste and sobriety in dealing with opponents. He had the moral courage to advocate unpopular causes.
General
He investigated with acuteness and ability many important questions relative to morals, and controverted the doctrine of a Moral Sense, as irreconcilable with the unalterable character of fundamental moral conceptions, which, as well as those of Substance and Cause, he maintained to be eternal and original principles of the intellect itself, independent of the Divine Will. He has admirably illustrated the differences existing between Morality and Sensation, Virtue and Happiness; at the same time that he points out the intimate connection existing between the two last.
Dr. Price was not a Socinian, but an Arian; he wrote professedly in confutation of Socinianism; and though I disapprove of his religious principles, I feel no hesitation in affirming, in spite of the frantic and unprincipled abuse of Burke, that a more ardent and enlightened friend of his country never lived than that venerable patriarch of freedom.
If in England you only look at London in the eighteenth century, you will doubtless there see little else than sensualism. But even at London, you would find, by the side of Priestley, Price, that ardent friend of liberty, that ingenious and profound economist, who renewed and brilliantly sustained the Platonic idealism of Cudworth. I know that Price is an isolated phenomenon at London; but the whole Scotch school is more or less spiritualistic.
Almost the only writer of this [the rationalistic] school whose works are likely to form a part of our standard philosophy, is Dr. Richard Price…. In his controversy with Priestley, particularly, he showed how strongly he viewed the philosophical aberration of the age, and how earnestly he desired to place moral and metaphysical truth upon its deeper and truer foundation.
His style displays in no eminent degree either of the cardinal virtues of a philosophical work; he is not remarkably perspicuous, and he is far from being remarkably precise. His numerous political and economical pamphlets are written with considerable energy, “not unfitly typified by the unusual muscular and nervous activity of his slender person.”
It is comparatively plausible to say that the intellect is the sole agent in framing the criterion. His language upon this subject may sometimes remind us of Kant’s “Categorical Imperative;” and he seems to have been blundering round the same truths or errors from which the great German elaborated a moral theory far more ingenious, though involving the same fundamental fallacy.
A veteran who had nearly reached his sixtieth year when our period commences, chiefly belongs to literature as an antagonist of Burke, as does Priestley, whose writing was very extensive, but who was as much more a “natural philosopher” than a man of letters as Price was much less a man of letters than a moralist and a statistician.
Price’s reputation at the present time rests mainly upon the position which he occupies in the history of moral philosophy. His ethical theories are mostly contained in “A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals,” of which the first edition was published in 1757, and the third, expressing “the author’s latest and maturest thoughts,” in 1787…. The English moralist with whom Price has most affinity is Cudworth. The main point of difference is that, while Cudworth regards the ideas of right and wrong as νοηματα or modifications of the intellect itself, existing first in germ, and afterwards developed by circumstances, Price seems rather to regard them as acquired from the contemplation of actions, though acquired necessarily, immediately, and intuitively. The interest of his position, however, in the history of moral philosophy, turns mainly on the many points of resemblance, both in fundamental ideas and in modes of expression, which exist between his writings and those of Kant, whose ethical works are posterior to those of Price by nearly thirty years.
