The Welsh moral and political philosopher was born at Tynton,
Glamorganshire, went to a Dissenting academy in London, was preacher at Newington Green
and Hackney (outer London), and established a reputation by his Review of the
Principal Questions in Morals (1756) and Importance of Christianity (1766).
In 1769, he was made D.D. by Glasgow, and published the celebrated Northampton
Mortality Tables. In 1771, appeared his Appeal on the National Debt and in
1776 his Observations on Civil Liberty and the War with America. The Observations
brought him an invitation from the United States Congress to assist in regulating its
finances. In his great treatise on morals he held that right and wrong are simple ideas
incapable of analysis, and received immediately by the intuitive power of the reason. In
1791, Price became an original member of the Unitarian Society.
Richard Price was a mathematician, an expert on insurance, and an advisor
to Shelburne and Pitt on financial reform. He was also one of the leaders of the
Dissenting campaigns to extend he rights of freedom of worship and of civic equality.
Although Price is little known today outside the province of the 18th
century specialist, his importance today is as the author of A Discourse on the Love
of Our County, the work which prompted Edmund Burke to write his Reflections on
the Revolution in France and initiate the pamphlet war of the 1790s.
See the following works of Price:
Britain's
Happiness, and the Proper Improvement of it
Observations
on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the
Justice and Policy of the War with America
Additional
Observations on the Nature and Value of Civil Liberty, and the War with
America
A
Fast Sermon (1781)
Observations
on the Importance of the American Revolution and the Means of making it a
Benefit to the World
The
Evidence for a Future Period of Improvement in the State of Mankind
| Return to the Lecture |
| The History Guide | |
copyright © 2000 Steven Kreis
Last Revised -- May 13, 2004
Conditions of Use |