Rereading Priestley: Science at the Intersection of Theology and Politics

Popular poem, cited in an editorial footnote to Priestley's An appeal to the public on the subject of the riots in Birmingham (1791), in Rutt John Towill (ed.), The theological and miscellaneous works of Joseph Priestley (London, 1817–32; hereafter cited as Works), xix, 356–57, n †. The poem reflects the popular beliefs that Priestley secreted gunpowder under a church so as to blow it up during a sermon, and that barrels of gunpowder were actually found in his laboratory during the “Priestley Riots”. The accusation echoed the events surrounding the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Priestley Joseph , Familiar letters addressed to the inhabitants of Birmingham … (1790), in Works, xix, 143.

Priestley Joseph , The present state of Europe compared with ancient prophecies … (1794), in Works, xv, 521–4.

Ibid., 525. The suppression of these and other popular organizations began right around the time Priestley was preparing to leave England; the British authorities had decided that the disturbances inspired by the French Revolution as well as by the reform movement in England had gotten out of hand. For the attacks on the Dissenters and their organizations, see Scott Wilson L. , “The impact of the French Revolution on English science: A case history in three dichotomies”, in Mélanges Alexandre Koyré, à l'occasion de son soixante-dixième anniversaire (Paris, 1964), 475–95.

See also Belsham Thomas , Memoirs of the late Rev. Theophilus Lindsey … (London, 1873), 260–3.

“Evil man” is Dr Johnson's coinage. For this and other assessments of Priestley, see Schaffer Simon , “Evil man: The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley: A study of his life and work from 1733 to 1773 by Robert Schofield”, London review of books, 21 May 1998, 22; Fruchtman Jack , The apocalyptic politics of Richard Price and Joseph Priestley: A study in late eighteenth century English republican millennialism (Philadelphia, 1983), preface and 105–6; Garrett Clarke , “Joseph Priestley, the millennium, and the French Revolution”, Journal of the history of ideas, xxxiv (1973), 51–66. Isaac Kramnick rightly crowned Priestley the “leading radical intellectual of his era” ( Kramnick Isaac , “Eighteenth-century science and radical social theory: The case of Joseph Priestley's scientific liberalism”, Journal of British studies, xxv (1986), 1–30, p. 4). See also Schroder Henry , Annals of Yorkshire from the earliest period to the present time (Leeds, 1851–52), i, 346. The letters that Rutt published in Priestley's autobiography do not give a full sense of his connections with the leaders of the opposition to the British government. Similarly, his biography plays down this part of his life. But other sources confirm that he regularly dined with and met such figures as Benjamin Franklin, Josiah Quincy, John Adams and many other American rebels and leaders when they came to visit England. Similarly he was in contact with Richard Price, Theophilus Lindsey, John Jebb, Michael Dodson and many others who were active in British politics. Lindsey Theophilus , Letters of Theophilus Lindsey, ed. by McLachlan Herbert (Manchester, 1920) is anecdotal but provides a sharply defined picture of the activities of Priestley and his radical friends during the 1770s, 1780s and 1790s (see esp. chs 3–5).

Lindsey , Letters (ref. 6), 110.

Priestley Joseph , Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley, to the year 1795, written by himself; with a continuation to the time of his decease by his son, Joseph Priestley, and observations on his writings by Thomas Cooper and William Christie (Northumberland, 1806; hereafter cited as Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley by Cooper), 117–18.

Priestley to Condorcet, 30 July 1771, in Life and correspondence, Works, i, Part 2, 129. Life and correspondence, Parts 1 and 2, constitute the first volume of Priestley's Works. They contain the original autobiography of Priestley (up to 1768) and an invaluable selection of his letters.

Schaffer , op. cit. (ref. 6), 22. For two excellent historiographical essays, see idem, “Priestley's questions: An historiographic survey”, History of science, xxii (1984), 151–83; McEvoy John G. , “Joseph Priestley, ‘aerial philosopher’: Metaphysics and methodology in Priestley's chemical thought, from 1762 to 1781”, Parts 1–3, Ambix, xxv (1978), 1–55, 93–116, 153–75 and Part 4, Ambix, xxvi (1979), 16–38.

Among the early studies that slight Priestley's scientific accomplishments are Thorpe Thomas E. , Joseph Priestley (New York, 1906) and Gibbs Frederick W. , Joseph Priestley: Adventurer in science and champion of truth (London, 1965). An early study of Priestley that does justice to his scientific knowledge is Walker W. Cameron , “The beginnings of the scientific career of Joseph Priestley”, Isis, xxi (1934), 81–97. Recent studies that attempt to give Priestley his due include Schofield Robert E. , “The scientific background of Joseph Priestley”, Annals of science, xiii (1957), 148–63; idem, “Joseph Priestley, natural philosopher”, Ambix, xiv (1967), 1–15; Ihde Aaron J. , “Priestley and Lavoisier”, in Hiebert Erwin N. , Joseph Priestley, scientist, theologian, and metaphysician: A symposium celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the discovery of oxygen by Joseph Priestley in 1774 (Lewisburg, 1980), 62–91. Cf. Robinson Eric , “Priestley's library of scientific books: A new list”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, i (1970), 145–60; Crosland Maurice , “A practical perspective on Joseph Priestley as a pneumatic chemist”, The British journal for the history of science, xvi (1983), 223–38; McKie Douglas , “Priestley's laboratory and library and other of his effects”, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, xii (1957), 114–36; Laboucheix Henri , “Chemistry, materialism and theology in the work of Joseph Priestley”, Price-Priestley newsletter, i (1977), 31–48. Lavoisier's Traité élémentaire de chimie, présenté dans un ordre nouveau et d'après les découvertes modernes (1789) was translated into English and published in Edinburgh (Elements of chemistry, in a new systematic order, containing all the modern discoveries (1790)) within a year of its original publication, and promptly won ardent support. (Probably Lavoisier's most vocal partisan in Scotland was Joseph Black (1728–99).) It should be mentioned that Priestley had a running debate with the Scottish Common Sense school; the school's warm reception of Lavoisier's new chemistry did not predispose Priestley to give it a fair hearing.

Schofield Robert E. , “Joseph Priestley: Theology, physics, and metaphysics”, Enlightenment and dissent, ii (1983), 69–81, pp. 71, 79. (Enlightenment and dissent is the successor to Price-Priestley newsletter, a valuable source of information on Priestley.) Schofield developed this argument in his “Joseph Priestley and the physicalist tradition in British Chemistry”, in Hiebert , op. cit. (ref. 11), 92–117. See also idem, “Joseph Priestley, the theory of oxidation and the nature of matter”, Journal of the history of ideas, xxv (1964), 285–94. Schofield's recent biography of Priestley provides a larger conceptual context for his liberal philosophy. This context includes the Cambridge Platonists, the Dutch Arminians and John Locke ( Schofield Robert E. , The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley: A study of his life and work from 1733 to 1773 (University Park, PA, 1997), 50–51). Arnold Thackray holds similar views. See his ‘“Matter in a nut-shell’: Newton's Opticks and eighteenth-century chemistry”, Ambix, xxv (1968), 29–53. Cf. Crosland , op. cit. (ref. 11), 223–38.

McEvoy , op. cit. (ref. 10), Part 1, 1–5 provides an analysis of early twentieth-century scholarship on Priestley. McEvoy includes among the scholars who viewed Priestley's science as backward and inadequate Jeffrey F. Hartog P. Sir Meldrum A. N. , For a discussion of Schofield's work, see McEvoy John G. , “Joseph Priestley, natural philosopher: Some comments on Professor Schofield's views”, Ambix, xv (1968), 115–23.

McEvoy John G. , “Electricity, knowledge, and the nature of progress in Priestley's thought”, The British journal for the history of science, xii (1979), 1–30, pp. 1–3, 18–24; idem, op. cit. (ref. 10, 1978), Part 1, 5–7, and idem, op. cit. (ref. 10, 1979), Part 4, 32–35.

McEvoy John G. , “Causes and laws, powers and principles: The metaphysical foundations of Priestley's concept of phlogiston”, in Anderson R. G. W. Lawrence Christopher (eds), Science, medicine, and dissent: Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) (London, 1987), 55–71, p. 66.

Ibid., 66–67.

Ibid., 67–68. A case in point is Lavoisier's idea of caloric, which presented problems to those raised by phlogiston. A close examination of this issue can make even Thomas Kuhn look like a Whiggish historian, for his emphasis on the incommensurability of phlogiston and oxygen makes him look like an advocate of the idea of progressive revolutions in science (see Kuhn Thomas S. , The structure of scientific revolutions, 2nd edn (Chicago, 1970), 52–56). This aspect of Kuhn's thinking was elaborated in McCann H. Gilman , Chemistry transformed: The paradigmatic shift from phlogiston to oxygen (New Jersey, 1978).

Yolton John W. , Thinking matter: Materialism in eighteenth-century Britain (Oxford, 1984), ch. 1. While McCann, in his Chemistry transformed (ref. 17), deals with such sociological issues as academic communities in Edinburgh, London and Paris, he also looks (in ch. 3) at the internal development of scientific theories to argue that theoretical anomalies and inadequacies brought about the Chemical Revolution. In another important study of eighteenth-century materialism, Aram Vartanian argues that “the sources and meanings alike of scientific naturalism in the eighteenth century are … most intimately, although by no means exclusively, discoverable in the complex of Cartesian thought” ( Vartanian Aram , Diderot and Descartes: A study of scientific naturalism in the Enlightenment (Princeton, 1953), 292).

Boscovich Roger Joseph (1711–87) was a Jesuit whose work Priestley probably discovered over the course of his reading for History and present state of discoveries relating to vision, light and colours (London, 1772; hereafter cited as History of optics). A mathematician, an astronomer and the author of Theoria naturalis philosophiae (1758; English translation 1763), Boscovich is considered the modernizer of atomic theory. He never subscribed to Priestley's materialism. Boscovich revised Newton's corpuscular theory of matter and essentially saw the world as made up of tiny billiard balls. He reduced the attributes of matter (impenetrability, solidity, extension) to forces, which permitted a better accounting for an array of phenomena. Boscovich's atom had no extension and could not be considered matter, since it was strictly the centre point of force. See Williams Leslie P. , Michael Faraday: A biography (New York, 1965), 73–80; Yolton , op. cit. (ref. 18), 108–9; cf. Müller Karis , “Physics and the deity: The ideas of R. Boscovich and J. Priestley”, Enlightenment and dissent, xii (1993), 49–63.

Schofield , op. cit. (ref. 12, 1964), 293. See also idem, Mechanism and materialism: British natural philosophy in an age of reason (Princeton, 1970), 245–6; idem, A scientific autobiography of Joseph Priestley, 1733–1804: Selected scientific correspondence (London, 1966), 169–70.

Schofield , op. cit. (ref. 11, 1967), 9.

Idem, op. cit. (ref. 12, 1997), 247–8.

Schaffer , op. cit. (ref. 6), 23. The second part of Schofield's biography of Priestley has not yet been published. Priestley read British mechanistic theories of attraction and repulsion some twenty-five years before he came across the work of Boscovich. Schofield suggests that there was little in Boscovich's theory that Priestley did not know and that he owed his scientific ideas to the physicalist tradition in which he had been trained ( Schofield , op. cit. (ref. 11, 1967), 9–10).

“In view of the obvious inadequacies in the orthodox view of Priestley's scientific thought, [my] study will provide a new historiography for Priestley scholarship that seeks to replace the appearance of a wayward, and somewhat schizoid mentality, by the reality of Priestley's considerable synoptic powers. … The categories of Priestley's thought reveals a mind with unusual synoptic power, bent on the articulation of the interconnections and ramifications of the central doctrines of his philosophy of nature.” McEvoy , op. cit. (ref. 10, 1978), Part 1, 5, cf. idem, op. cit. (ref. 10, 1979), Part 4, 32–34; idem, op. cit. (ref. 14), 2–3, 24.

These categories are taken from McEvoy , op. cit. (ref. 14), passim. For a similar criticism, see Golinski Jan V. , “Utility and audience in eighteenth-century chemistry: Case studies of William Cullen and Joseph Priestley”, The British journal for the history of science, xxi (1988), 15–16. Among the studies that address the larger context of eighteenth-century science are those by Jan V. Golinski and Simon Schaffer and that of Knox Kevin C. , “Dephlogisticating the Bible: Natural philosophy and religious controversy in late Georgian Cambridge”, History of science, xxxiv (1996), 167–200. An excellent study of the period just subsequent to that discussed here (i.e., the last decade before Priestley fled to London and then to America) is Money John , “Joseph Priestley in cultural context: Philosophic spectacle, popular belief and popular politics in eighteenth-century Birmingham”, Parts 1 and 2, Enlightenment and dissent, vii (1988), 57–81; viii (1989), 69–89.

Christie J. R. R. Golinski Jan V. , “The spreading of the word: New directions in the historiography of chemistry, 1600–1800”, History of science, xx (1982), 256–7.

Ibid., 261.

As Golinski and others have pointed out, Priestley was in touch with other scientists and joined the Lunar Society after the 1780s. I am not convinced that these connections influenced his science to the extent that the Dissenters did.

Priestley has provided his own explanation of the long incubation of Hartley's ideas in the preface to Priestley Joseph , Disquisitions relating to matter and spirit … (London, 1777).

See also Schaffer Simon , “Priestley and the politics of spirit”, in Anderson Lawrence (eds), op. cit. (ref. 16), 39–53, pp. 39–40.

On Priestley's apologetic entrance into the field of natural science, see the preface to Priestley , History of optics (ref. 19). For his concerns regarding his qualifications as a chemist, see McEvoy , op. cit. (ref. 13), 116; see also Jan Golinski V. , Science as public culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1992), 50–51.

Priestley Joseph , The history and present state of electricity …, 3rd edn (London, 1775; hereafter cited as History of electricity), p. xxiii.

Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 9), Works, i, Part 1, 68.

I use the term ‘epistemology’ to designate what Priestley thought of as the foundation of human knowledge. In other words, this was what humans could expect to know and what they could not, given their constitution. An “egalitarian epistemology” is one that posits the equal capacity of all humans for understanding some things even if they are incapable of knowing others. The best formulation of this position is in Priestley Joseph , Institutes of natural and revealed religion … (London, 1772); this was Priestley's first major publication.

Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 9), Works, i, Part 1, 10, 2–7; Thorpe , op. cit. (ref. 11), 1–8. See also Jack Lindsay's introduction to Priestley Joseph , Autobiography of Joseph Priestley: Memoirs written by himself (Bath, 1970).

Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 9), Works, i, Part 1, 11.

Haggerstone's curriculum was largely devoted to mathematics. Priestley thought that this Baxterian minister was “a little more liberal than the members of the congregation in which [he] was brought up” and found that conversation with his teacher “tended to undermine [his own Calvinist] prejudices” ( Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 9), Works, i, Part 1, 14–15). Andrew Baxter (1686(?)–1750), was a theological and philosophical writer. Baxterians occupied a position somewhere between the Calvinists, who believed that grace was entirely predetermined by God, and the Arminians, who believed in salvation through works and faith. Arianism, named for its founder Arius, was a more radical movement that denied the tenets of Calvinism. Most Britons saw Arians as heretics since they denied the divinity and eternity of Christ. But definitions varied a lot and Priestley, who converted to Arianism himself, never denied Christ's divinity. Priestley's brother Timothy, who adopted Evangelicalism with a zeal not unlike Priestley's, delivered a eulogy at Priestley's death. In it he suggested that Priestley, who had met Haggerstone again in 1774, had said to Timothy that his mathematics teacher was the “man who brought [him] out of the dark hole of Calvinism” ( Priestley Timothy , A funeral sermon occasioned by the death of … Rev. Joseph Priestley (London, 1804), 40–41; see also Taylor R. V. , Yorkshire anecdotes (London, 1887), 239–40).

Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 9), Works, i, Part 1, 11. According to Priestley, Walker was an excellent classical scholar and a Rational Christian. He was an Arminian and possibly subscribed to Arian beliefs, rejecting, among other things, the Calvinist notion of predestination and embracing the principle that free will played a part in the attainment of grace. Most likely Walker was one of the Socian or Arian ministers Timothy Priestley accused of having lured his brother away from Haggerstone's Baxterianism ( Priestley T. , op. cit. (ref. 37), 37). Socianism (named after Socianus) was an early form of Unitarianism and denied the Trinity.

William Graham objected to the doctrine of atonement (this would be a favourite target of Priestley's later on) as well as to the Trinity. Priestley saw in him a true Unitarian. He taught Priestley classical literature and made a lifelong impression on a young man who was then rather orthodox in his Christian beliefs.

Schofield has rightly suggested that the trauma of being turned out of his childhood chapel for heresy marked Priestley's early drift from mainstream Calvinism ( Schofield , op. cit. (ref. 12, 1997), 1–3, 32–35).

Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 9), Works , i, Part 1, 15, 18. Arianism is the doctrine that denies the true divinity of Christ. Arius (born in Egypt c. 250, died in Constantinople in 336), who articulated the basic Arian philosophy in a poetical work entitled Thalia, maintained that the Son of God had not been endowed with eternal life and was created by the Father from nothing — He was not himself godly. Arians, who first appeared in England in the middle of the seventeenth century, rejected the doctrine of the Trinity along with the divinity of Christ. Was Priestley a heretic? Definitions are tricky and it is not clear that at this point in Priestley's life he denied the divinity of Christ altogether. But in the eyes of most Britons, Arianism was a principal heresy (since it involved the denial of the divinity or eternity of Christ) and association with Arians could very well have earned Priestley this reputation.

Between 1752 and 1755 Priestley received the equivalent of a university education at Daventry. Between 1761 and 1767 he worked and taught at Warrington. Finally, after his house was burned in 1791 and up until the time of his departure for America in 1794, Priestley taught at Hackney New College, which replaced Warrington when that school shut its doors.

O'Brien P. , Warrington Academy, 1757–1786: Its predecessors and successors (Wigan, 1989), 9–11. The laws aimed against the Nonconformists were repressive. First, the Corporation Act of 1661 required members of the government and of borough corporations to take a political oath of allegiance to the Crown and to perform the Anglican sacraments. As is well known, within two years of the Restoration those who refused were ejected from the Church. Some two thousand English and Welsh clergymen lost their positions, along with their livings. Second, the new leaders in Parliament were determined to eradicate Nonconformity root and branch. They passed the Act of Uniformity in 1662, which required all those in ecclesiastical positions to subscribe to the religious oaths earlier imposed on members of corporations, and to declare their full acceptance of the Anglican Book of common prayer (1549, final revision 1662). While this Act did not produce uniformity, it did stop Dissenters from playing an active role in their communities. And though the Conventicle Act that followed (1664) implied the acceptance of private worship by Dissenters, it created yet another obstacle to the normal operation of sectarian congregations by outlawing private religious meetings of more than five persons. Fourth, the Five Miles Act (1665) forbade ministers and preachers who had lost their licenses from coming within five miles of the parish in which they had held office, and they were barred from entering any town or corporate borough. Finally, and most importantly, the Test Act (1673, 1678) obliged office holders (civil and religious alike) to take a doctrinal oath (in addition to the political oath of loyalty to the state already required). These oaths were to be taken in open court and written proof that the office holders had recently taken communion in the Established Church was required ( Kenyon John P. , The Stuart constitution, 1603–1688: Documents and commentary (London, 1976), 337, 339, 351–2, 356, 376–9, 385–6; Bradley James E. , Religion, revolution and English radicalism: Nonconformity in eighteenth-century politics and society (Cambridge, 1990), ch. 2).

Henriques Ursula , Religious toleration in England, 1787–1833 (London, 1961), 13–15.

O'Brien , op. cit. (ref. 43), 5.

Bradley , op. cit. (ref. 43), ch. 2; Rodgers Betsy Aikin-Sneath , Georgian chronicle: Mrs. Barbauld and her family (London 1958), 12–13. For the persecution the founders of the Warrington Academy suffered under these laws, see O'Brien , op. cit. (ref. 43), 8–12.

Priestley Joseph , A view of the principles and conduct of the Protestant dissenters: With respect to the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of England, 2nd edn (1769), Works, xxii, 360. On the education of the clergy, see also Collins Irene , Jane Austen and the clergy (London, 1994), ch. 3; Schofield , op. cit. (ref. 12, 1997), 32–33; Golinski , op. cit. (ref. 31), ch. 3.

O'Brien , op. cit. (ref. 43), ch. 8. Many of the prominent Dissenters worked and taught in two or more academies. These connections are spelled out in Smith J. W. A. , The birth of modern education: The contribution of the dissenting academies, 1660–1800 (London, 1954), ch. 5. The lives of many of the men and women involved are recounted in Turner William , Lives of eminent Unitarians (London, 1840–43).

For an attempt to discuss the institutional context, see Golinski , op. cit. (ref. 25), 16–25. I am not convinced that this article's focus on scientific communities (as opposed to the religious communities that I am focusing on) can actually be justified. The only real community of this sort was the Lunar Society, which Priestley joined after he moved to Birmingham, in the 1780s. By then his positions on all the major issues were quite settled. A focus on scientific communities projects the idea of an autonomous scientific practice anachronistically onto the eighteenth century — Such autonomy is hard to reconcile with Priestley's work.

Smith , op. cit. (ref. 48), ch. 5; Parker Irene , Dissenting academies in England: Their rise and progress … (Cambridge, 1914), Part 2; Schofield , op. cit. (ref. 12), 31–52. On Doddridge, see Stoughton John , Philip Doddridge: His life and labours; a centenary memorial (London, 1851), 89–91. The attack on Doddridge followed his conviction by “the Spiritual Court” of presiding over and teaching at a Northampton seminary. He died just as the Daventry Academy first opened its doors and was succeeded by Caleb Ashworth (1722–75).

A detailed review of Priestley's education at Daventry is provided in Schofield , op. cit. (ref. 12), 40–62. Information on Hartley is provided below. Doddridge served as a tutor to many prominent figures in the Dissenting community. Some of these figures later became close associates and friends of Priestley. An example is the Rev. John Aikin, whose family Priestley befriended at the Warrington Academy. For more information, see Smith , op. cit. (ref. 48), 129–80; Harsha David A. , Life of Philip Doddridge … (Albany, 1865), 83–94.

Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 9), Works, i, Part 1, 23.

Ibid., 24. Hartley was trained for the clergy but his unwillingness to accept the Thirty-nine Articles precluded a career in the Church. Effectively a Dissenter, Hartley became a physician and philosopher and developed a psychological system known as “associationism” upon which Priestley was to draw extensively.

“Necessarianism” should not be confused with Calvinism or predestination. It refers to a causal, material connection between all natural phenomena.

Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 9), Works, i, Part 1, 24–25.

Ibid., 40.

Dictionary of national biography, s.v. “Seddon, John”. With the closing of the private academies set up at Kendal and Findern (1754), Nonconformist students desperately needed a new academy; Seddon responded to that need. John Seddon had a Unitarian cousin by the same name, with whom he is sometimes confused.

Thorpe , op. cit. (ref. 11), 34. Upon completing his studies in Glasgow, Seddon opened the new academy in 1757 ( O'Brien , op. cit. (ref. 43), 45; Smith , op. cit. (ref. 48), 160–7).

Students at the Warrington Academy also studied the three classical arts of law, medicine and divinity. Margaret C. Jacob recently illustrated the contribution of several Dissenters to the industrial culture of the eighteenth century. See her “Commerce, industry, and the laws of Newtonian science”, Canadian journal of history, xxxv (2000), 275–92. For a survey of student interest in the various fields of concentration, see Parker , Dissenting academies in England (ref. 49), appendix 5. On the academy's curriculum, see Smith , op. cit. (ref. 48), 166–9. The Warrington Academy was one of the first to employ more than one tutor. Furthermore, it enjoyed an institutional identity quite distinct from the Nonconformist congregation of Warrington. The academy was also one of the first at which the natural sciences were studied, as well as the first to become Arian and eventually Unitarian.

Graham Jenny , “Revolutionary in exile: The immigration of Joseph Priestley to America, 1794–1804”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, lxxxv/2 (1995), 4.

Graham Jenny , “Revolutionary philosopher: The political ideas of Joseph Priestley (1733–1804)”, Part 1, Enlightenment and dissent, viii (1989), 43–68, p. 52. Among Priestley's colleagues and friends at Warrington were Dr John Taylor (who taught divinity), Dr John Aikin the elder (theology, ethics and logic), Dr John Reinhold Forster (a naturalist and traveller who accompanied Cook on one of his voyages) and Dr William Enfield (mathematics and natural sciences). Another tutor with whom Priestley had extensive exchanges was the eccentric Dissenter and classicist Gilbert Wakefield, but he joined the academy after Priestley had left ( Thorpe , op. cit. (ref. 11), 33–34; Smith , op. cit. (ref. 48), 161–8). Warrington was also home to Anna Laetitia Barbauld (daughter of John Aikin Sr, a famous poet and publicist), her brother John Aikin Jr (a promoter of medical reforms at the turn of the century) and many more whose contributions to the formation of Dissenting ideology were invaluable.

Graham , op. cit. (ref. 60), 52–53.

Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 9), Works, i, Part 1, 58–59.

McLachlan Herbert , Warrington Academy: Its history and influence (Manchester, 1943), 3–5.

Thorpe , op. cit. (ref. 11), 33.

Lincoln Anthony , Some political and social ideas of English dissent, 1763–1800 (Cambridge, 1938).

Barlow Richard B. , Citizenship and conscience: A study in the theory and practice of religious toleration in England during the eighteenth century (Philadelphia, 1963); Richey Russell E. , “The origins of British radicalism: The changing, rationale for dissent”, Eighteenth-century studies, vii (1973–74), 179–92; Bradley James E. , “Whigs and nonconformists: Slumbering radicalism in English politics, 1739–89”, Eighteenth-century studies, ix (1975), 1–27. Cf. Henriques's equally important study: op. cit. (ref. 44), 18–53. In the preface to the second edition of his Essay on the first principles of government (1771), Works, xxii (hereafter cited as Essay (1771)), Priestley himself modestly stated that he had placed the most valuable interests of mankind on a broader foundation and a firmer basis than had Locke and others who had formerly written upon this subject (p. 3). Locke had refused to reject anyone who was Protestant. Priestley went further, arguing for a complete and limitless toleration, which included Catholics, unbelievers and other religious minorities (p. 63; see also p. 72, n. *). Priestley supported the universal language of toleration of any opinion of any man: “Ask for the common right of humanity” in matters of beliefs, he advised his fellow Dissenters in his A letter of advice to those Dissenters who conduct the application to Parliament for relief from certain penal laws (1773) ( Works , xxii, 442–43 [my italics]). See the plea for tolerating Catholics in Priestley Joseph , A free address to those who have petitioned for the repeal of the late Act of Parliament, in favour of the Roman Catholics (1780), Works, xxii, 499–516. Unfortunately, this position brought down on him the wrath not only of the clergy but also of his fellow Dissenters.

Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 9), Works , i, Part 1, 68–70. A work that made up Priestley's mind for good was A letter to Lord Viscount Barrington: (written in the year 1730) concerning the question, whether the logos supplied the place of a human soul in the person of Jesus Christ (London, 1833), written by Nathaniel Lardner (1684–1768). Following Lardner, Priestley believed that Christ was chosen by God to carry out his word: This was reason enough to love and adore him, but Christ was not invested with the powers of the Divine. See Rutt's n. * in Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 9), Works , i, Part 1, 69–71. See also Schofield , op. cit. (ref. 12), 172–3.

The struggle between England and the American colonies helped define the camps of the reform movement, whose origins can be traced to the 1760s. See Claeys Gregory , Thomas Paine: Social and political thought (Boston, 1989), Introduction and ch. 1; Brewer John , Party ideology and popular politics at the accession of George III (Cambridge, 1981); idem, “English Radicalism in the Age of George III”, in Pocock J. G. A. (ed.), Three British revolutions, 1641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton, 1980), 323–67; Bailyn Bernard , The ideological origins of the American Revolution, enlarged edn. (Cambridge, 1992), esp. ch. 2. Cf. O'Brien Conor C. , The great melody: A thematic biography and commented anthology of Edmund Burke (London, 1993), Introduction; Fruchtman , op. cit. (ref. 6), ch. 3.

Barlow , op. cit. (ref. 66), 132–3. Rudé's social history of this period has ignored this political context. For example, neither Fleming (a friend of Mrs Macaulay and part of Wilkes's intellectual circle) nor Priestley is mentioned in George Rudé, Wilkes and liberty: A social study of 1763 to 1774 (London, 1962). See Lowe C. , “The House of Lords, party, and public opinion: Opposition use of protest, 1760–1782”, Albion, xi (1979), 143–56, pp. 144–5; Schnorrenberg Barbara B. , “The brood hen of fiction: Mrs. Macaulay and radical politics, 1765–1775”, Albion, xi (1979), 33–45, pp. 33–36; Graham , op. cit. (ref. 60), Part 1, 53–55. For Priestley's involvement in Wilkite radical propaganda, see ibid., 56–57. Contrary to the argument made in Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, 1992), ch. 3, I doubt that Wilkes was accepted as a true patriot by the British; many radicals claimed that their motives were patriotic (Richard Price and Priestley among them), but few were convinced by this. See Lincoln , op. cit. (ref. 65), 22–29.

Priestley remarked that he had written several “anonymous pieces in favour of civil liberties, during the persecution of Mr. Wilkes” ( Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 9), Works , i, Part 1, 75). One of these, written at the suggestion of his editor, was The present state of liberties in Great Britain and her colonies … (1769). There Priestley argued that the “great Bill of Rights has been invaded by a repeated refusal, to admit the first county in England, to judge of the fitness of the person who shall represent them in parliament; and one whom they had freely chosen has been excluded, though guilty of no crime” (idem. The present state of liberties in Great Britain and her colonies …, Works , xxii, 390). See also Graham , op. cit. (ref. 60), Part 1, 55–56. After the riots of 1791, Priestley suggested that he had written very few other political pamphlets (idem, op. cit. (ref. 3), 425). His opponents insisted on a connection between his early views, his radical theological views and his support of both the American and French Revolutions.

For Priestley's objection to Britain's colonial policies, see Memoirs of Joseph Priestley by Cooper (ref. 8), 449–52; Priestley Joseph , op. cit. (ref. 70, 1769); An address to the Protestant dissenters of all denominations on the approaching election of Members of Parliament, with respect to the state of public liberty in general and of American affairs in particular (1774), Works, xxii. Cf. Graham , op. cit. (ref. 59), 10; Fruchtman , op. cit. (ref. 6), 58–59. On the Dissenters' attitudes towards the American cause, see Bonwick C. C. , “English Dissenters and the American Revolution”, in Allen H. C. Thompson Roger (eds), Contrast and connection: Bicentennial essays in Anglo-American history (London, 1976), 88–112; Sheps Arthur , “Ideological immigrants in revolutionary America”, in Fritz Paul Williams David (eds), City and society in the eighteenth century (Toronto, 1973), 231–46. See also Graham , op. cit. (ref. 59), 1–21.

Graham , op. cit. (ref. 59), 6–8.1 agree with Graham's radical interpretation of Priestley, and with her characterization of his political philosophy as “Lockean”. What that means in this case is that he strongly advocated the right of oppressed peoples to rebel against tyrannical government (ibid., 7–9). For a similar assessment of Priestley's radicalism, see Fruchtman , op. cit. (ref. 6), ch. 5. On the “revival of dissenting activity”, see Barlow , op. cit. (ref. 66), ch. 4.

See Priestley , Essay (1771), 3–5. Warburton was chaplain to the King and, later, Bishop of Gloucester. The title of his treatise, somewhat abbreviated, was The alliance between Church and State; or the necessity and equity of an established religion and a test-law demonstrated: From the essence and end of civil society (London, 1736). Warburton advocated the toleration of Nonconformists but opposed the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, a favourite target of the Dissenters. Given the form of Warburton's essay, it is not surprising that Priestley chose to write a defence of religious toleration in the form of a work on the nature of civil society. See Barlow , op. cit. (ref. 66), 52–56.

Balguy (at that time archdeacon of Winchester) published his Letter concerning confessions of faith, and subscriptions to articles of religion in Protestant churches; occasioned by perusal of the confessional (by Francis Blackburne) (London, 1768), to which Priestley responded in his 1769 Considerations on Church authority (included in the second edition of the Essay). Priestley argued that an individual's commitments to God were far more important than his commitments to the state. See Memoirs of Priestley by Cooper (ref. 8), 507–17.

Henriques , op. cit. (ref. 44), 54–55; Priestley Joseph , Remarks on some paragraphs in the fourth volume of Dr. Blackstone's commentaries on the laws of England relating to the Dissenters (1769), Works, xxii, 302. Blackstone was a jurist and a teacher of law at Oxford whose books were widely read in America and England. Priestley opposed, among other things, Blackstone's attack on Wilkes.

We should note that the subtitle to Essay runs as follows: An essay on the first principles of government; and on the nature of political, civil, and religious liberty. In my discussion of this issue in the second part of this section I will rely on the second edition. In the ensuing section I shall rely on the first edition of 1768 (not included by Rutt in Priestley's Works).

Memoirs of Priestley by Cooper (ref. 8), 582; Priestley to Lindsey, 23 August 1771, and Priestley to Lindsey, 2 March 1772, in Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 9), Works, i, Part 1, 144 and n. *, 159–60 and n. ‡. On Priestley's radical position on this campaign, see his Letters to a layman, on the subject of the Rev. Lindsey's proposal for a reformed English Church (1774), Works, xxi, 29–49. A Bill to relieve the Dissenters of religious restrictions was brought to Parliament in April 1772 ( Lincoln , op. cit. (ref. 65), ch. 6; Henriques , op. cit. (ref. 44), ch. 3).

See Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 66, 1773), 456–57, and passim. He demanded that the campaign champion universal toleration, rather than a toleration of specific Christian sects.

Priestley , Essay (1768), 1–2.

In a later (and angrier) pamphlet, Priestley reiterated that “the most important questions relating to religion are the plainest things in the world, and require nothing but a common understanding, honestly applied, to comprehend them” ( Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 2), 191).

Priestley , Essay (1768), 12. For an excellent presentation of this and other relevant points, see Lincoln , op. cit. (ref. 65), ch. 5.

Priestley Joseph , Letters to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (Birmingham, 1791), esp. Letter 1 (I have used a copy of the original publication). These points were repeated and reinforced in Priestley's response to Burke's Reflections of the revolution in France (1790). By 1791 Priestley's plea for universal toleration found little sympathy in England ( Fruchtman , op. cit. (ref. 6), 52–53).

Priestley , Essay (1768), 4–5.

See Priestley Joseph , Letters to a young man, occasioned by Mr. Wakefield's essay on public worship; to which is added, a reply to Mr. Evanson … (1792), Works, xx. In this pamphlet on the Sabbath, Priestley discusses congregational relations. Also, Eshet Dan , “Life, liberty and leisure: Sunday observance in England and cultural ideology of modern leisure” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1999), ch. 2.

As Isaac Kramnick points out, Priestley did not idealize the “state of nature” as a golden age to which he wanted to return ( Kramnick , “Eighteenth-century science and radical social theory” (ref. 6), 18). See also Priestley , Essay (1768), 59, 71; cf. Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 82), Letters 1–3.

For an excellent discussion of the term ‘republicanism’, see Fruchtman , op. cit. (ref. 6), chs 2–3. Pocock's interpretation of republicanism, which assigns the landed élite and its property the central role in government, is incompatible with Priestley's idea of civil society ( Pocock J. G. A. , The Machiavellian moment: Florentine political thought and the Atlantic republican tradition (Princeton, 1975); idem, “Virtue and commerce in the eighteenth century”, Journal of interdisciplinary history, iii (1972), 119–34; idem, “The Machiavellian moment revisited: A study of history and ideology”, Journal of modern history, liii (1981), 49–72; idem, Virtue, commerce, and history: Essays on political thought and history, chiefly in the eighteenth century (New York, 1985), esp. chs 3 and 6). Priestley's model placed the “majority of those whose circumstances render them above being corrupt” at the centre (with no reference to property of any kind); while he preferred indirect elections, his political model is as democratic as it gets in the eighteenth century. The British system struck him as “very unequal and imperfect” ( Priestley Joseph , op. cit. (ref. 70, 1769), 385, 394).

See also Graham , op. cit. (ref. 60), 55; cf. Fruchtman , op. cit. (ref. 6), 44–45.

Priestley , Essay (1771), 54. Cf. Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 82), Letters 6–8.

Idem, Essay (1771), 74.

Ibid., 96.

Ibid., 69–70.

Idem, op. cit. (ref. 47), 341, 354, 356–9. The Dissenters supported, at this point, a limited monarchy, but by no means supported a republican constitution.

His movement was therefore from epistemology through physics to metaphysics.

Timothy Priestley recalled that his brother had first experimented with spiders at the age of eleven ( Priestley T. , op. cit. (ref. 37), 42).

Priestley Joseph , Experiments and observations on different kinds of air, 3rd edn (London, 1781), i, p. xiv. The first edition of this study was published in 1774.

Ibid.

Michell John (1724–93), an astronomer and member of the Royal Society (which he joined in 1760), helped Priestley in the preparation of his study of optics as well as in working out his ideas about materialism ( Schofield , op. cit. (ref. 20), 244–6). On Michell's optics and its relations to Priestley's see Hardin Clyde L. , “The scientific work of the Reverend John Michell”, Annals of science, xxii (1966), 24–47, pp. 43–47; Steffens Henry J. , The development of Newtonian optics in England (New York, 1977), 67–80.

See also Yolton , op. cit. (ref. 18), 110–11. Boscovich's “particles” were the centre-point of forces but had no existence in themselves. Priestley's theory was indeed Newtonian or corpuscular, but he differed from Anglican Newtonians in that he thought of forces as an integral part of matter.

Priestley , History of optics (ref. 19), 391.

Ibid., 390–1. As I mentioned earlier, Priestley took his cue from Boscovich, who argued that matter consisted of “physical points” imbued with or surrounded by forces of attraction and repulsion. But for Priestley the materialist, those “points” meant something entirely different for he saw in them the most fundamental form of matter.

On the prevalence of Newtonian optics in the mid-eighteenth century, see Steffens , op. cit. (ref. 97), 51–66.

A defining moment in early eighteenth-century Newtonianism was the correspondence between Samuel Clarke (1675–1729), Newton's loyal disciple, and the German philosopher and mathematician, Leibnitz Gottfried Wilhelm (1646–1716). Over the course of their dialogue, Clarke elaborated the position I have described as that of “Anglican Newtonians”. See Clarke Samuel , A collection of papers, which passed between the late learned Mr. Leibnitz, and Dr. Clarke … (London, 1717). For the politics of Newtonianism in the first half of the eighteenth century, see Stewart Larry , “Samuel Clarke, Newtonianism, and the factions of post-revolutionary England”, Journal of the history of ideas, xlii (1981), 53–72. For the politics of Newtonianism in the 1780s and the 1790s, see Scott , op. cit. (ref. 4), 481–4. For Newtonianism in the study of optics, see Steffens , op. cit. (ref. 97), 1–54.

Priestley , History of optics (ref. 19), 392–3. The passage quoted refers to Baxter Andrew , An enquiry into the nature of the human soul, wherein the immateriality of the soul is evinced from the principles of reason and philosophy (1733). On Baxter, see Yolton , op. cit. (ref. 18), 111–12, 138–41. On Baxter's dualist interpretation of the mind-body connection (with which Priestley struggled), see Wilde C. B. , “Matter and spirit as natural symbols in eighteenth-century British natural philosophy”, The British journal for the history of science, xv (1982), 102–3; Schaffer Simon , “States of mind: Enlightenment and natural philosophy”, in Rousseau George S. (ed.), The languages of psyche: Mind and body in Enlightenment thought (Berkeley, 1990), 233–90, pp. 279–81.

Priestley Joseph , An examination of Dr. Reid's inquiry into the human mind … (London, 1774), esp. p. xix.

Ibid. See also Section 3 above and ref. 52.

Idem, First introductory essay, Hartley's Theory of the human mind, on the principle of the association of ideas; with essays relating to the subject of it by Joseph Priestley (London, 1775), p. vii. Priestley argued that Hartley (1705–57) had drawn his principles from Newton, who was the first to suggest a theory of vibrations. At the end of his Principia and in the Queries at the end of his Opticks (e.g., Query 13), Newton wondered if the process by which ideas of external objects were created might involve the mechanical transmission of sensations. He suggested that beams of light excited the retina by vibrations, which were then transmitted through the optic nerve to the brain to create an impression. But Priestley relied heavily on Locke, one of the few who thought, according to Priestley , “that a capacity of thinking may be given to matter” (Ibid., p. xix). For an extensive discussion of this issue, see Yolton , op. cit. (ref. 18), ch. 1.

Priestley Joseph , Second introductory essay, op. cit. (ref. 106), p. xxxvii.

Idem, First introductory essay, ibid., p. xvii.

Ibid., pp. xxv–xxvi.

Ibid., p. xix.

Ibid., p. xix.

Ibid., p. xx.

Lord Shelburne supported a number of radicals, including Wilkes Price Priestley Bentham (see Schaffer , op. cit. (ref. 103), 238, 252–8). Shelburne was educated at Oxford, served in the Seven Years' War and first entered Parliament in 1760. He was prime minister between 1772 and 1783, but had to resign because of the objections of the Foxite Whigs (despite his opposition to the war). He did not serve in any official capacity after 1783. But Shelburne supported the Dissenters on several occasions, especially when they revived their appeal for the repeal of the Test Act in 1772. Such sympathies made it possible for Shelburne to hire Priestley and then to employ him in a variety of tasks, including the tutelage of his children.

Schofield , op. cit. (ref. 12), 271.

Priestley , Disquisitions relating to matter and spirit … (London, 1777; hereafter cited as Disquisitions), 3–23. The theoretical elaboration of the penetrability and complexity of matter came from Boscovich and Michell.

Ibid., 6–7.

Ibid., p. xxxviii.

Ibid., 26.

Ibid., 27–29.

Ibid., 60–65.

Ibid., 114–20.

Ibid. , 197–200. By contrast, Plato thought about the soul in material terms: It had heat, weight and so on. Cf. ibid., 191–2.

Ibid., 216; Priestley , A history of the corruptions of the Christian Church (1782, reprinted London, 1871), 302–3.

Priestley , Disquisitions, 218–20.

Cf. Schofield , in Hiebert , op. cit. (ref. 11), 111.

For Priestley's view on progress, see McEvoy , op. cit. (ref. 14), passim; Hoecker James J. , “Joseph Priestley and a historian and the idea of progress”, Price-Priestley newsletter, iii (1979), 29–40; Canovan Margaret , “The irony of history: Priestley's rational theology”, Price-Priestley newsletter, iv (1980), 16–25.

Priestley , op. cit. (ref. 123, 1871), 272.

Disquisitions was published in 1777, five years after the publication of Institutes of natural and revealed religion (ref. 34), and five years before History of the corruptions (ref. 127). Priestley saw all three works as part of a single project (see Priestley , Disquisitions , p. xxvi; idem, op. cit. (ref. 123, 1871), pp. x–xii).

Priestley , Disquisitions, p. xii. For a brief discussion of this point, see Gibbs , op. cit. (ref. 11), 98–99.

Boscovich to Priestley, 17 October 1778, in Schofield , op. cit. (ref. 20), 169–70.

As I have already mentioned, the book cost Priestley his patron and his relationship with Boscovich; it also cost him many of his friends ( Gibbs , op. cit. (ref. 11), 100; see also Priestley to Boscovich, 19 August 1778, in Schofield , op. cit. (ref. 20), 166–8).

Priestley , Disquisitions, p. vii. For his death in 1782, see The gentleman's magazine, lii (1782), 357.

Materialism was crucial to political thought even before Karl Marx turned it into the foundation of radicalism. For an excellent assessment of the politics of (psychological) materialism in the late eighteenth century, see Schaffer , op. cit. (ref. 103), 241–52. For radicalism and materialism in 1830s science, see Desmond Adrian , The politics of evolution: Morphology, medicine, and reform in radical London (Chicago, 1992). For Priestley's role in the development of these “evolutionary” sciences see Desmond Adrian Moore James , Darwin (New York, 1992), 8–11.