Welsh Journals

pamphlets, seventy-one articles and forty-eight related works have been published, mostly in the last half-century. The renewal of interest can be seen as a restoration of Price's reputation. That reputation can be measured by the impressive range of topics and variety of correspondents in the final volume of the letters finely edited by Bernard Peach. Over a quarter of the letters in the collection are from abroad. These include some fascinating correspondence from France in the early years of the Revolution, but they are primarily from America. Price had become a central figure in the Anglo- American Enlightenment; his old friend and patron, the Earl of Shelburne, now Marquis of Lansdowne, conceived an even more exalted role for him. In reading Condorcet's Vie de M. Turgot, he had been 'captivated' by one of Turgot's ideas, namely that of 'establishing certain fix'd fundamental principles of law, commerce, morality and politics comprehensive enough to embrace all religions and all countrys'. This he believed should be Price's mission, and notably to be an apostle for world peace. Price's response was guarded. He believed that he was insufficient for the task and that his life's work was done. It was the revolutionary crisis in France which thrust him back into the limelight and which led him to believe that the moment had indeed arrived for peace to break. out. In the years before his death, Price acted as the leading interpreter of the Revolution for the liberal Enlightenment and was the main intermediary between liberal-minded French Revolutionaries and their supporters in England. Unfortunately, universal principles lost out to national aggrandizement; historical practice prevailed over the prospect of a more enlightened future. In retrospect, Price's expectations seem naive. But he was not alone, and he had done his best to promote his vision of a warless world. He himself had lived by his exacting ideals. These were pin-pointed by Mrs Hester Chapone, in a letter, in 1786. An admirer of Price, she was a lady beset by doubts about her faith, but found assurance in his belief that 'an honest heart sincerely desirous to know the truth and to act agreeably to it, is alone requisite to salvation'. The final volume of the correspondence lives up to the high standards of the previous two. Taken as a whole, the correspondence has involved a reconstruction of a major part of the late Enlightenment world, the footnotes alone providing an encyclopaedia of many of its interests and participants. More importantly, that world comes alive through the work of this remarkable man. His humanity and integrity shine through his correspondence. If he would have been profoundly saddened by the failure of the world to implement his ideals, he would have also seen that his ideals have not been entirely lost. They are alive, not least in the work of his editors and bibliographers. Sad to say, their sort of scholarly enterprise, involving collaboration over many years, sustained by personal interest and completed without large tranches of money from academic funding agencies, is now actively discouraged. In welcoming the completion of the correspondence and the bibliography, we salute an age of scholarship which is passing away. MARTIN FITZPATRICK Aberystwyth