I JOSEPH PRIESTLEY H 



and noblest, in European society shuddered at 

 the outburst of long-pent-up social fires. Men's 

 feelings were excited in a way that we, in this 

 generation, can hardly comprehend. Party wrath 

 and virulence were expressed in a manner un- 

 paralleled, and it is to be hoped impossible, in our 

 times; and Priestley and his friends were held up 

 to public scorn, even in Parliament, as fomenters 

 of sedition. A ** Church-and-King " cry was 

 raised against the Liberal Dissenters; and, in 

 Birmingham, it was intensified and specially 

 directed towards Priestley by a local controversy, 

 in which he had engaged with his usual vigour. 

 In 1791, the celebration of the second anniversary 

 of the taking of the Bastile by a public dinner, 

 with which Priestley had nothing whatever to do, 

 gave the signal to the loyal and pious mob, who, 

 unchecked, and indeed to some extent encouraged, 

 by those who were responsible for order, had the 

 town at their mercy for three days. The chapels 

 and houses of tlie leading Dissenters were 

 wrecked, and Priestley and his family had to fly 

 for their lives, leaving library, apparatus, papers, 

 and all their possessions, a prey to the fiames. 



Priestley never returned to Birmingham. He 

 bore the outrages and losses inflicted upon him 

 with extreme patience and sweetness,* and betook 



* Even Mrs. Priestley, who might be forgiven for re- 

 pnrding the destroyers of her household gods with some 

 asperity, contents herself, in writing to IMrs. Barhauld. with 

 the sarcasm that the Birmingham people " will scarcely find 



