In 1780 Priestley went to Birmingham. In the summer of 1791 occurred that remarkable riot, perhaps the most dramatic event in the philosopher’s not unpicturesque career. This storm had long been gathering, and when it broke, the principal victim of its anger was, I verily believe, more astonished than frightened. The Dissenters were making unusual efforts to have some of their civil disabilities removed. Feeling against them was especially bitter. In Birmingham this hostility was intensified by the public discourses of Mr. Madan, ‘the most respectable clergyman of the town,’ says Priestley. He published ‘a very inflammatory sermon … inveighing against the Dissenters in general, and myself in particular.’ Priestley made a defense under the title of Familiar Letters to the Inhabitants of Birmingham. This produced a ‘reply’ from Madan, and ‘other letters’ from his opponent. Being a conspicuous representative of that body which was most ‘obnoxious to the court’ it is not surprising that Priestley should have been singled out for unwelcome honors. The feeling of intolerance was unusually strong. It was said—I don’t know how truly—that at a confirmation in Birmingham tracts were distributed against Socinianism in general and Priestley in particular. Very reputable men thought they did God service in inflaming the minds of the rabble against this liberal-minded gentleman. Priestley’s account of the riot in the Memoir is singularly temperate. It might even be called tame. He was quite incapable of posing, or of playing martyr to an audience of which a goodly part was sympathetic and ready to believe his sufferings as great as he chose to make them appear. One could forgive a slight outburst of indignation had the doctor chosen so to relieve himself. ‘On occasion of the celebration of the anniversary of the French revolution, on July 14, 1791, by several of my friends, but with which I had little to do, a mob, encouraged by some persons in power, first burned the meeting-house in which I preached, then another meeting-house in the town, and then my dwelling-house, demolishing my library, apparatus, and as far as they could everything belonging to me.… Being in some personal danger on this occasion I went to London.’
A much livelier account from Priestley’s own hand and written the next day after the riot is found in a letter to Theophilus Lindsay. ‘The company were hardly gone from the inn before a drunken mob rushed into the house and broke all the windows. They then set fire to our meeting-house and it is burned to the ground. After that they gutted, and some say burned the old meeting. In the mean time some friends came to tell me that I and my house were threatened, and another brought a chaise to convey me and my wife away. I had not presence of mind to take even my MSS.; and after we were gone the mob came and demolished everything, household goods, library, and apparatus.’ The letter differs from the Memoir in saying that ‘happily no fire could be got.’ Priestley afterwards heard that ‘much pains was taken, but without effect, to get fire from my large electrical machine which stood in the Library.’
It is rather a curious fact that Priestley was not at the inn where the anniversary was celebrating. While the company there were chanting the praises of liberty he was at home playing backgammon with his wife, a remarkably innocent and untreasonable occupation. Mr. Arthur Young visited the scene of the riot a few days later and had thoughts upon it. ‘Seeing, as I passed, a house in ruins, on inquiry I found that it was Dr. Priestley’s. I alighted from my horse, and walked over the ruins of that laboratory which I had left home with the expectation of reaping instruction in; of that laboratory, the labours of which have not only illuminated mankind but enlarged the sphere of science itself; which has carried its master’s fame to the remotest corner of the civilized world; and will now with equal celerity convey the infamy of its destruction to the disgrace of the age and the scandal of the British name.’ It is not necessary to supplement Arthur Young’s burst of indignation with private bursts of our own. We can afford to be as philosophic over the matter as Priestley was. That feeling was hot against him even in London is manifest from the fact that the day after his arrival a hand-bill was distributed beginning with the words: ‘Dr. Priestley is a damned rascal, an enemy both to the religious and political constitution of this country, a fellow of a treasonable mind, consequently a bad Christian.’ The ‘bad Christian’ thought it showed ‘no small degree of courage’ in Mr. William Vaughan to receive him into his house. ‘But it showed more in Dr. Price’s congregation at Hackney to invite me to succeed him.’ The invitation was not unanimous, as Priestley with his characteristic passion for exactness is at pains to tell the reader. Some of the members withdrew, ‘which was not undesirable.’
People generally looked askance at him. If he was upon one side of the street the respectable part of the world made it convenient to pass by on the other side. He even found his relations with his philosophical acquaintance ‘much restricted.’ ‘Most of the members of the Royal Society shunned him,’ he says. This seems amusing and unfortunate. Apparently one’s qualifications as a scientist were of little avail if one happened to hold heterodox views on the Trinity, or were of opinion that more liberty than Englishmen then had would be good for them. Priestley resigned his fellowship in the Royal Society.
One does not need even mildly to anathematize the instigators of that historic riot. They were unquestionably zealous for what they believed to be the truth. Moreover, as William Hutton observed at the time, ‘It’s the right of every Englishman to walk in darkness if he chooses.’ The method employed defeated its own end. Persecution is an unsafe investment and at best pays a low rate of interest. No dignified person can afford to indulge in it. There’s the danger of being held up to the laughter of posterity. It has happened so many times that the unpopular cause has become popular. This ought to teach zealots to be cautious. What would Madan have thought if he could have been told that within thirty years one of his own coadjutors in this affair would have publicly expressed regret for the share he had in it? Madan has his reward, three quarters of a column in the Dictionary of National Biography. But to-day Priestley’s statue stands in a public square of Birmingham opposite the Council House. Thus do matters get themselves readjusted in this very interesting world.
Rutt’s Life of Priestley (that remarkable illustration of how to make a very poor book out of the best materials) contains a selection of the addresses and letters of condolence which were forthcoming at this time. Some of them are stilted and dull, but they are actual ‘documents,’ and the words in them are alive with the passion of that day. They make the transaction very real and close at hand.
Priestley was comparatively at ease in his new home. Yet he could not entirely escape punishment. There were ‘a few personal insults from the lowest of the rabble.’ Anxiety was felt lest he might again receive the attentions of a mob. He humorously remarked: ‘On the 14th of July, 1792, it was taken for granted by many of my neighbors that my house was to come down just as at Birmingham the year before.’ The house did not come down, but its occupant grew ill at ease, and within another two years he had found a new home in the new nation across the sea.
It is hardly exact to say that he was ‘driven’ from England, as some accounts of his life have it. Mere personal unpopularity would not have sufficed for this. But at sixty-one a man hasn’t as much fight in him as at forty-five. He is not averse to quiet. Priestley’s three sons were going to America because their father thought that they could not be ‘placed’ to advantage in a country so ‘bigoted’ as their native land was then. ‘My own situation, if not hazardous, was become unpleasant, so that I thought my removal would be of more service to the cause of truth than my longer stay in England.’
The sons went first and laid the foundations of the home in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. The word ‘Susquehanna’ had a magic sound to Englishmen. On March 30, 1794, Priestley delivered his farewell discourse. April 6 he passed with his friends the Lindsays in Essex Street, and a day later went to Gravesend. For the details of the journey one must go to his correspondence.
His last letters were written from Deal and Falmouth, April 9 and 11. The vessel was six weeks in making the passage. The weather was bad and the travelers experienced everything ‘but shipwreck and famine.’ There was no lack of entertainment, for the ocean was fantastic and spectacular. Not alone were there the usual exhibitions of flying-fish, whales, porpoises, and sharks, but also ‘mountains of ice larger than the captain had ever seen before,’—for thus early had transatlantic captains learned the art of pronouncing upon the exceptional character of a particular voyage for the benefit of the traveler who is making that voyage. They saw water-spouts, ‘four at one time.’ The billows were ‘mountain-high, and at night appeared to be all on fire.’ They had infinite leisure, and scarcely knew how to use it. Mrs. Priestley wrote ‘thirty-two large pages of paper.’ The doctor read ‘the whole of the Greek Testament and the Hebrew Bible as far as the first book of Samuel.’ He also read through Hartley’s second volume, and ‘for amusement several books of voyages and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.’ ‘If I had [had] a Virgil I should have read him through, too. I read a great deal of Buchanan’s poems, and some of Petrarch’s de remediis, and Erasmus’s Dialogues; also Peter Pindar’s poems, … which pleased me much more than I expected. He is Paine in verse.’