Richard Price did not cringe in the face of hostile public opinion when events temporarily brought his principles into unpopularity. More than most of his liberal contemporaries, he was truly a "torchbearer of freedom." His first book was an attack on the empiricism of Locke, however, Richard Price intended no denial of other aspects of Locke's thought. An abiding faith in human reason, in free will, and in the value of education and science, with the consequent distrust of tyranny of any variety, all show that Price was not in revolt against the leading philosophical trends of his age. Rather he sought to place these values on a firm moral basis. In association with many of the great spirits of the age, Joseph Priestley, Benjamin Franklin, Adam Smith, John Howard, the Younger Pitt, and Turgot, among others, he moved from moral philosophy to mathematics (an area in which he made many advances in statistics) and from there to political economy. His contribution in this latter respect was twofold. There was his enormous influence in drawing attention to the problem of the national debt of England and suggesting the Sinking Fund scheme that Pitt finally introduced. And there was his interest in and encouragement of the independence of America. In 1778 the Continental Congress voted to invite Price to take up American citizenship and offered to pay his expenses if he chose to move. The life of Richard Price is an example of the power of the human spirit to shape the course of history.