32 '^ JOSEPH PRIESTLEY i 



payments allotted with retail, rather than royal, 

 sagacity. 



Barefaced and brutal immorality and intem- 

 perance pervaded the land, from the highest to 

 the lowest classes of society. The Established 

 Cliurch was torpid, as far as it was not a scandal; 

 but those who dissented from it came within the 

 meshes of the Act of Uniformity, the Test Act, 

 and the Corporation Act. By law, such a man as 

 Priestley, being a Unitarian, could neither teach 

 nor preach, and was liable to ruinous fines and 

 long imprisonment.* In those days the guns 

 that were pointed by the Church against the Dis- 

 senters were shotted. The law was a cesspool of 

 iniquity and cruelty. Adam Smitli was a new 

 prophet whom few regarded, and commerce was 

 ham})ered by idiotic impediments, and ruined 

 by still more absurd help, on the part of 

 government. 



Birmingham, though already the centre of a 

 considerable industry, was a mere village as 

 com]>ared with its present extent. People who 

 travelled went about armed, by reason of the 

 abundance of highwaymen and the paucity and 

 inetliciency of the police. Stage coaches had not 

 reached Birmingham, and it took three days to get 

 to London. Even canals were a recent and much 

 opposed invention. 



♦ In 1732 Doddridfre was cited for teaching without tho 

 Bishop's leave, at Northampton. 



