Pitt (William). Earl of Chatham, an illustrious English statesman and orator, b. Boconnoc, Cornwall, 15 Nov. 1708. The services to his country of "the Great Commoner," as he was called, are well known, but it is not so generally recognised that his Letter on Superstition, first printed in the London Journal in 1733, entitles him to be ranked with the Deists. He says that "the more superstitious people are, always the more vicious; and the more they believe, the less they practice." Atheism furnishes no man with arguments to be vicious; but superstition, or what the world made by religion, is the greatest possible encouragement to vice, by setting up something as religion, which shall atone and commute for the want of virtue. This remarkable letter ends with the words "Remember that the only true divinity is humanity." Place (Francis), English Radical reformer and tailor; b. 1779 at Charing Cross. He early became a member of the London, Corresponding Society. He wrote to Carlile's Republican and Lion. A friend of T. Hardy, H. Tooke, James Mill, Bentham, Roebuck, Hetherington, and Hibbert (who puts him in his list of English Freethinkers). He was connected with all the advanced movements of his time and has left many manuscripts illustrating the politics of that period, which are now in the British Museum. He always professed to be an Atheist--see Reasoner, 26 March, '54. Died at Kensington, 1 Jan. 1854. Platt (James), F.S.S., a woolen merchant and Deistic author of popular works on Business, '75; Morality, '78; Progress, '80; Life, '81; God and Mammon, etc. Pliny (Caius Plinius Secundus), the elder, Roman naturalist, b. Verona, A.D. 22. He distinguished himself in the army, was admitted into the college of Augurs, appointed procurator in Spain, and honored with the esteem of Vespasian and Titus. He wrote the history of his own time in 31 books, now lost, and a Natural History in 37 books, one of the most precious monuments of antiquity, in which his Epicurean Atheism appears. Being with the fleet at Misenum, 24 Aug. A.D. 79, he observed the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and landing to assist the inhabitants was himself suffocated by the noxious vapors. Plumacher (Olga), German pessimist, follower of Hartmann, and authoress of a work on Pessimism in the Past and Future, Heidelberg, 1884. She has also defended her views in Mind. Plumer (William) American senator, b. Newburyport, Mass. 25 June, 1759. In 1780 he became a Baptist preacher, but resigned on account of scepticism. He remained a deist. He served in the Legislature eight terms, during two of which he was Speaker. He was governor of New Hampshire, 1812-18, wrote to the press over the signature "Cincinnatus," and published an Address to the Clergy, '14. He lived till 22 June, 1850.