V.] JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 103 



hoped impossible, in our times ; and Priestley and his 

 friends were held up to public scorn, even in Parlia- 

 ment, 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 Bastille 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 the 

 leading Dissenters were wrecked, and Priestley and his 

 family had to fly for their lives, leaving library, appa- 

 ratus, papers, and all their possessions, a prey to the 

 flames. 



Priestley never returned to Birmingham. He bore 

 the outrages and losses inflicted upon him with ex- 

 treme patience and sweetness, 1 and betook himself to 

 London. But even his scientific colleagues gave him 

 a cold shoulder ; and though he was elected minister 

 of a congregation at Hackney, he felt his position to 

 be insecure, and finally determined on emigrating to 

 the United States. He landed in America in 1794; 

 lived quietly with his sons at Northumberland, in 



1 Even Mrs. Priestley, who might be forgiven for regarding the 

 destroyers of her household gods with some asperity, contents herself, in 

 writing to Mrs. Barbauld, with the sarcasm that the Birmingham people 

 " will scarcely find so many respectable characters, a second time, to 

 make a bonfire of." 



