Nine famous Birmingham men; lectures delivered in the University

Preface

It hardly needs to be said that these are only a few of the men who have been the spiritual builders of the city of Birmingham as we know it, or who have otherwise lent it lustre. Besides those selected for the present course, the names of Boulton, Sturge, Cox, Vince, Bunce, Shorthouse, Lightfoot, Benson (to confine ourselves to the past) readily occur. Of the nine, only a few are Birmingham men in the sense of having been born in the town. But there is no reason why a city should not take as much credit for attracting as for giving birth to distinguished men. Birmingham has had a happy gift for this method of attachment.

The Course was arranged somewhat hastily by the Social Study Committee of the University as a contribution to the programme of the Workers' Educational Association for the session 1908-9. Its aim was, while doing honour to great names, to show how it takes all sorts of

vii viii PREFACE

men and movements to make a great modern city. College lectures may aim at education in more than one way. They may seek ta inform and organize thought on a particular subject, or they may aim at touching feeling and inspiring the will. While some of the lectures which follow may, it is hoped, prove contributions to the literature of the subjects of which they treat, all of them are a call to the younger generation of Birmingham citizens to remember to what manner of city they belong and to what manner of men they owe it.

A fear was expressed by some that the Course might raise controversies foreign to education and thus introduce elements of discord into the movement it was intended to help. The Committee was confident that the fear was groundless. They believed that Birmingham men and women had sufficient magnanimity to come together to do honour to great names without respect to party or creed. They remembered Carlyle's saying of himself and John Sterling that " they were agreed in everything but opinion," and felt convinced that the general result would be the wholesome recogni-

PREFACE

IX tion of the insignificance of theoretic differences in view of practical agreement on the great ends and issues of Hfe.

Thanks are due to the generosity of a well-known citizen of Birmingham, who desires to remain anonymous, for enabling the publishers to add the portraits which accompany the lectures, without adding to the cost of the volume. These portraits may be regarded as his gift to the working men and women of Birmingham.

Birmingham, March, 1909.

Contents

PAGE

JOSEPH PRIESTLEY i

By Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S., Principal of the University of Birmingham.

II Political Philosophy 29

excellently adapted to the purpose of wiping off from paper the marks of black lead pencil. It must therefore be of singular use to those who practise drawing. It is sold by Mr. Nairne, mathematical instrument maker, opposite the Royal Exchange. He sells a cubical piece of about half an inch for three shillings, and he says it will last several years.

It is necessary now to give some indications of the position of Priestley as a Political Philosopher, and to exhibit his importance in the history of Sociology. But as this falls within Professor Muirhead's province, and he may be able to do it, I hope, without undue trouble, I have asked him to insert here a few paragraphs, either from one of his Courses of Lectures, or from some other store, illustrative of Priestley the citizen and his Political ideals.

For a full account of the ideas which Priestley expounded in his Essay on the First Principles of Government, and his other political writings it would be necessary to go at some length into the political conditions and opinions of the time. It must be sufficient here to recall that the chief need of the eighteenth century in the latter half of which he wrote was the assertion of individual rights against misguided interference of the government ; while that of the nineteenth century (the ideas of which Priestley partly anticipated), was the assertion of the common good against institutions which were based either on mere right of prescription or on the interest and influence of a section of the community. Hence it was that the watchword of the one was the "natural rights of the individual/' that of the other was the " good of the whole." Priestley represents the transition between these two movements. Sir Oliver Lodge has shown that he had little instinct for true theory in chemistry, and even showed a lamentable faculty of getting hold of the stick by the wrong end. There is a similar want of clarity in his political theory. He may be said to have got hold of the stick by both ends and not to have known which was the right one. Yet two points stand clearly out in connexion with each of the above affinities, establishing his claim to honour in political and moral philosophy as well as in chemistry.

I. He asserted the claim of the right of private judgment and the principle of toleration with a completeness and consistency that excelled even John Locke and his own distinguished

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 31

contemporary and brother-at-arms in the same cause, Dr. Price. " The whole system of uniformity seems to me to be founded on very narrow and shortsighted views of poHcy"; " unbounded freedom in thinking upon all kinds of subjects may certainly be attended by some inconvenience, but it cannot be restrained without infinitely greater inconvenience"; "let us be free ourselves and leave the blessings of freedom to our posterity" ; "I stand in need of liberty myself, and I wish that every creature of God may enjoy it equally with myself," are some of his most characteristic sayings.

2. To him belonged the merit of striking the note which Bentham took up and extended with such power and variation in his Utilitarian philosophy. Writing of the growth of his own opinions Bentham tells us that it was by a pamphlet of Priestley's that " light was added to warmth. In the phrase ' the greatest happiness of the greatest number,' I there saw delineated for the first time a plain as well as a true standard of whatever is right and wrong, useful and useless or mischievous in human conduct, whether in the field of morals or politics." ^ In a more picturesque reference * Works, vol. X. 69.

Bentham tells us he came on Priestley's pamphlet in a London coffee-house and rose from the table crying '* Eureka ! "

While clearly indicating the Utilitarian principle, Priestley brought with him, what was uncommon in those times, the caution of a scientific observer into the field of politics. Any governmental interference, he held in true Utilitarian spirit, may be justified if it be for the good of the Community, yet legislation is a high and difficult art, " We are so little capable of arguing d priori in matters of government that it may seem experiments only can determine how far this power of the legislature ought to extend." This speculative caution is perhaps the reason why he failed (as Bentham elsewhere accuses him of doing) to make any adequate application of the principle he had the honour of formulating. Be this as it may» there is a pleasure in tracing the hospitable tolerance of all forms of religious opinion, and the sane collectivism in politics that have always been characteristic of Birmingham to the teaching of one of the earliest of its famous men. (J. H. M.)

WORK IN BIRMINGHAM 33

We must now turn to the remainder of his life. His time in Birmingham was not wholly devoted to science : much of it was given to theology, to preaching, and to public work. Of his preaching, the following is written by a member of his congregation :

I look upon his character as a preacher to be as amiable as his character as a philosopher is great. In the pulpit he is mild, persuasive, and unaffected, and his sermons are full of sound reasoning and good sense. He is not what is called an orator; he uses no actions, no declamation ; but his voice and manner are those of one friend speaking to another.

His Birmingham congregation is described as

the most liberal in England. And a member

of it describes him thus :

A man of admirable simplicity, gentleness, and kindness of heart, united with great acuteness of intellect. j I can never forget the impression produced on me by the serene expression of his countenance.

In the domestic relations of life he was uniformly kind and affectionate. Not malice itself could ever fix a stain ■on his private conduct or impeach his integrity.

' While in Birmingham he wrote a book The History of the Corruptions of Christianity, in

'which he attacked many of what we now see to be the errors and superstitions which grew round the simplicity of the early Gospel. He could hardly expect this book to pass unopposed ;

L.F.M. D in fact it was received with a storm of disapproval, and at Dordrecht on the Continent it was burnt by the common hangman. The contentions contained in it were, however, what we should now consider to be of a reasonable and sensible character, and have been summarized thus :

The New Testament, in Priestley's view, is not to be construed as a book of enigmas which might belong to any age. It is not dropped straight out of heaven into the hands of the man of to-day for him to make what he will of it. It belongs to a specific period ; it was written for a given class of persons ; it was written to be understood.

Accordingly, it is the whole object of Priestley's histories of doctrine to get at the mind of the common Christian people in the first age ; to make their primary understanding of Scripture the norm for its true interpretation.

The plan was novel, the conception original, the whole endeavour strictly scientific in its method and basis.

Another ground of offence appears to have been the enthusiasm with which he supported i the Sunday-school movement. We are told that this movement began in Birmingham ini 1784, and was favoured by most denominations. It was opposed, however, by certain ^ people who insisted that all children should attend the worship of the Established Church.

It must be admitted that the times were

LIBRARIES 35

desperately narrow, and I regret to have to refer to them. I am making no appeal to prejudice or sectarian animosity : it is merely a question of history. We can congratulate ourselves, I hope, in recognizing how different the atmosphere is now, and how out of date such controversies are.

Another service which Priestley achieved, of benefit to any community with whom he resided, was the establishment of a library. I believe that the Old Library in Birmingham, as well as the one in Leeds, owes its initiation to him. But I regret to say that even popular access to books was at that time strongly objected to : it was said to tend to the spread of Rationalism, and the library with its contents was vigorously abused by the orthodox.

Nevertheless Priestley considered that his time in Birmingham was the happiest period of his life, and in an autobiographical sketch he speaks of it as follows :

I esteem it a singular happiness to have lived in an 'age and country in which I have been at full liberty both jto investigate, and by preaching and writing to propagate, "eligious truth ; for though the freedom I have used for this purpose was for some time disadvantageous to me, it 'A^as not long so ; and my present situation is such that

I can, with the greatest openness, urge whatever appears to me the truth of the Gospel, not only without giving the least offence, but with the entire approbation of those with whom I am particularly connected.

But alas, this peaceful period was not to continue. Indeed, almost as he was writing, preparations must have been made for that mad outburst of popular passion which eventually drove him to America. It seems to have begun on the first anniversary of the taking of the Bastille in Paris. The fourteenth of July, 1791, was celebrated in several towns, among others in Birmingham. What party it was that stimulated the rising of the mob I prefer not to inquire, but certainly those who instigated and directed the outrage soon lost all control over the forces which they invoked ; and the result was a riot or series of riots of the most disgraceful as well as of the most alarming character.

The controversial methods of those times seem to have been miserably unfair, no attempt being made to understand the position of an opponent ; phrases divorced from their context, and employed only in a symbolical sense, were quoted as if they had been intended literally. A notable instance of this is a quota-'

BIGOTRY 37

tion from one of Priestley's Familiar Letters Addressed to the Inhabitants of Birmingham, where Priestley compares the process of free inquiry to the action of gunpowder, in a passage which concludes thus :

The present silent propagation of truth may even be compared to those causes in Nature which lie dormant for a time, but which in proper circumstances act with the greatest violence. We are, as it were, laying gunpowder, grain by grain, under the old building of error and superstition, which a single spark may hereafter inflame, so as to produce an instantaneous explosion ; in consequence of which that edifice, the erection of which has been the work of ages, may be overturned, in a moment, and so effectually as that the same foundation can never be buOt upon again.

This paragraph became to the enemies of the Dissenters a common topic of allusion, and was read in the House of Commons as an unquestionable proof of the dangerous designs of that body with respect to the constitution of this country. Hence the mischievous thinkers found no difficulty in persuading the unthinking actors that the real intention of the Dissenters [Was to destroy the churches.

By this kind of false witness it became possible to rouse the passions of an ignorant mob, ^and it is clear that some who ought to have known better were not altogether averse from a lesson being read, by some sort of mob violence, to people whom they considered schismatics and revolutionaries. They did not indeed intend that it should go to the length to which it actually went, but as usual the forces they had aroused soon got beyond their control ; and however much they might wish to stop the outbreak when it got beyond a certain point, they found themselves quite unable to do so.

It seems to me that whoever, in support of any cause, appeals to the prejudices and passions of a mob, is committing a crime. It is a very dangerous thing to have a mass of violent ignorance in our midst, and the effort of all educationists, and all social workers, is to endeavour to remove this ignorance ; but so long as it exists, its stirring up is a great responsibility. So far as I am able to judge from the past, a mob has generally been utilized in favour of the forces of vested interests and what is called "reaction" or putting back the clock.

Mob law is always bad law. A mob is actuated by prejudices and superstitions, not by intelligence and reason. A mob stirred up

RIOTING 39

I by priests is liable to be an agent of cruelty and blasphemy ; and, from the days of " Crucify Him " until now, has always — I think always — taken the wrong side.

The immediate outbreak at Birmingham

began in connexion with a public dinner at an

hotel, presumably '* The Olde Royal/' in

Temple Row. A number of gentlemen met

there to celebrate the anniversary of the taking

of the Bastille — the beginning of the French

' Revolution, which many enlightened people in

this country, including the poet Wordsworth,

s regarded as a movement fraught with hope

I and goodwill to mankind. The excesses and

1 crimes of the later revolution, and its collapse

: into military empire, could not of course be

: foreseen.

; Priestley, as a matter of fact, did not go to ; the dinner : he appears to have had nothing to [ do with it, but was playing backgammon at I home with his wife in his own back parlour. J But the mob assembled outside the hotel, all the same, and at a given signal (the signal being ; the cry ** Church and King ") the windows in ) front of the hotel were broken. Then, being [ assured of Priestley's absence, they swept away to the New Meeting House, which they assailed, we are told, with incredible fury.

The gates and doors were soon burst open, the pews demolished, the cushions and fragments carried out and burnt in front of the building, and at length fire was carried in which consumed it to the outer walls. The mob was now roused to frenzy. Some of the magistrates strove to quell the riot, and even those who had connived at the outrage grew alarmed at the dangerous temper which they had aroused. But the infuriated rabble by this time was thoroughly out of control, and no sufficient force was at hand to cope with it. The Old Meeting-house was next demolished, with the regularity of workmen employed for the purpose. A party armed with crow-bars, bludgeons, etc., tore down the pulpit, pews and galleries, and burnt them in the burying-ground, afterwards setting fire to the body of the meeting-house.

By no means satiated with these exploits, they now marched in a body to Priestley's house at Fair Hill, the cry of " Church and King " being again raised ; and though it did not belong to Priestley, but to a gentleman who, we are told, was deservedly a favourite of the poor, yet, because it was the dwelling of Dr. Priestley, it was doomed to destruction, and was attacked with the most savage and determined fury.

Priestley's personal escape was due to the foresight of a friend, Mr. Samuel Ryland, wh had just managed to hurry him and Mrs,

BIRMINGHAM RIOTS 41

Priestley into a chaise, and on to the house of a friend at a smaU distance, Mr. Russell. Here a room for the night was prepared, and the doctor was expressing thankfulness in being permitted to lie down in peace and comfort, when Mr. Russell hurried in to say that the mob had become more violent than ever ; that they now swore to find Dr. Priestley and take his life, and were coming in search of him with shouts of " Stone him." The chaise was again brought out, and they drove off, scarcely knowing whither to go. Next day he intended to set off on horseback for Worcester, to catch the London mail ; but the fugitives lost their way on a common between Heath Forge and Bridgenorth and wandered about all night. They managed however to reach Kidderminster in the early morning, and were there met by Mr. Ryland, so that ultimately they got away to London.

As a result of the activity of the mob, " Showell Green was destroyed, as were Bordesley Hall and Moseley Hall, and other houses in the vicinity of Moseley ; Mr. Ryland' s house at Easy Hill, and Mr. Hutton's house in High Street and his country seat at Wash wood Heath."

Ultimately, the magistrates being powerless to deal with the rioters, the soldiers were sent for, and the mob retreated to its dens.

The attitude exhibited to these events bjij people in authority indicated a curious mixture of disapprobation and satisfaction ; and, reading between the lines, one perceives that the result was not whole-heartedly regretted. For instance, the King, George III, writing to Mr. Secretary Dundas in approval of dragoons having been sent to Birmingham to quell the tumult, thus continues :

Though I cannot but feel better pleased that Priestley is the sufferer for the doctrines he and his party have instilled, and that the people see them in their true light, yet I cannot approve of their having employed such atrocioui means of showing their discontent.

M

The attitude of Priestley himself to these extraordinary persecutions, which overburdened his wife with anxiety and permanently ruined her health, is indicated by the following letter or Memorial which he addressed to his late co-citizens :

To THE Inhabitants of the Town of Birmingham.

" My late Townsmen and Neighbours, — After living with you eleven years, in which you had uniform experience of my peaceful behaviour, in my attention to the quiet

BIRMINGHAM RIOTS 43

studies of my profession and those of philosophy, I was far from expecting the injuries which I and my friends have lately received from you. But you have been misled. By hearing the Dissenters, and particularly the Unitarian Dissenters, continually railed at, as enemies to the present government in Church and State, you have been led to consider any injury done to us as a meritorious thing ; and not having been better informed, the means were not attended to. When the object was right you thought the means could not be wrong. . . .

You were prepared for every species of outrage, thinking that whatever you could do to spite and injure us was for the support of Government and especially the Church. In destroying us you have been led to think you did God and your country the most substantial service.

HappUy the minds of Englishmen have a horror of murder, and therefore you did not, I hope, think of that, though by your clamorous demanding of me at the hotel it is probable that at that time some of you intended me some personal injury. But what is the value of life when everything is done to make it wretched ? In many cases there would be greater mercy in despatching the inhabitants than in burning their houses. However, I infinitely prefer what I feel from the spoiling of my goods to the disposition of those who have misled you.

You have destroyed the most truly valuable and useful apparatus of philosophical instruments that perhaps any individual in this or any other country was ever possessed of, in my use of which I annually spent large sums, with no pecuniary view whatever, but only in the advancement of science, for the benefit of my country and of mankind. You have destroyed a library corresponding to that apparatus which no money can re-purchase, except in a course of time. But what I feel far more, you have destroyed manuscripts, which have been the result of the laborious study of many years, and which I shall never be able to recompose ; and this has been done to one who never did, or imagined you, any harm.

And that there was something more in the disturbance than merely mob violence, at any rate in the opinion of contemporary people oi importance, is indicated by the following lettei from Josiah Wedgwood to Priestley :

If the brutality had arisen merely from the ungovem'c madness of a mob [composed of] the lowest order of our species one would then lament all its effects like those of a storm or hurricane, but if there is reason to believe that the rabble were acted upon and encouraged to such proceedings by those who should be their superiors, one cannot but perceive the too evident spirit of the times, or of the place, at least, by which you and so many of your worthy neighbours have suffered.

The times, however, were naturally somewhat violent. The French Revolution must have been exciting intense interest, and, I should suppose, a good deal of alarm among the Party who at that time imagined itself to represent aristocratic opinion. For instance, Mr. Matthew Davenport Hill tells us of an instance whiclAl shows that feeling ran high, and that even so apparently loyal and harmless a toast as " Church and King " had become an instru-

BIGOTRY 45

ment of offence ; — which is not to be wondered at, seeing that it was that cry to which the riotous mob had responded on the occasion just described, for reasons which to its inteUigence, if it had had any, would have been quite unintelligible,

" The years following the riot of 1791," he writes, " witnessed various displays of hostile sentiment. At a municipal dinner shortly after that event . . . Dr. Parr was present, though the sturdy divine must have surmised that he would be the only representative of his opinions. The cloth being drawn, the chairman proposed, as the Doctor no doubt expected, the toast of ' Church and King.'

" Parr instantly started to his feet, proclaiming in a stem voice his dissent. ' No, sir,' said he, ' I will not drink that toast. It was the cry of Jacobites, it is the cry of incendiaries. It means a Church without the Gospel, and a King above the Law.' "

Such was the trouble of the times that even in London Priestley's position was very insecure. He could hardly persuade a landlord to take him as a tenant, for fear his house would be demolished ; and though he tried to continue his chemical work and his preaching, the rancour of his enemies made life intolerable. He was, in point of fact, boycotted ; servants were afraid to remain long with him, and the tradespeople hesitated to take his custom. He was several times burnt in effigy, with Thomas Paine ; and gross caricatures, in which he was described as " the treacherous rebel and Birmingham rioter," were exhibited. He received insulting letters likening him to Guy Fawkes, and to the devil ; some coming from people calling themselves ministers of the Gospel. In one of these he was threatened with being burned alive before a slow fire.

Burke inveighed against him in the House of Commons, and many of his associates in the Royal Society shunned him.

In those days the Government did not hesitate to take strong measures against any unpalatable reformer ; and a Mr. Thomas F. Palmer, a highly respectable gentlemen in Bedfordshire, had been sent to Botany Bay for seven years because he had published a paper in favour of Parliamentary Reform.

In answer to remonstrances, and urgings to leave the country, from his friends, Dr. Priestley writes as follows :

After the riots in Birmingham, it was the expectation, and evidently the wish of many persons, that I should immediately fly to France or America. But I had no consciousness of guilt to induce me to fly from my country.

Ill-treated as I thought I had been, notmerely by the

EMIGRATION 47

populace of Birmingham, for they were the mere tools of their superiors, but by the country in general, which evidently exulted in our sufferings, and afterwards by the representatives of the nation, who refused to inquire into the cause of them, I own I was not without deliberating upon the subject of emigration.

I hoped to have had no occasion for more than one, and that a final, remove. But the circumstances above mentioned have induced me, though with great and sincere regret, to undertake another, and to a greater distance than any I have hitherto made. . . . And I trust that the same good Providence which has attended me hitherto, and made me happy in my present situation, and all my former ones, will attend and bless me in what may still be before me. In aU events the will of God be done.

Further life in England had now become intolerable, and emigration had to be faced. Accordingly on April 8, 1794, Priestley and his wife set sail from London, and on June 4 they arrived in New York.

His friend and scientific opponent, Lavoisier, had met with even worse treatment at the hands of his ungrateful country. Sentence had been pronounced upon him, with the infamous ejaculation " the Republic has no need of chemists," and Lavoisier was executed by the guillotine.

Such was the treatment bestowed on the best of their citizens by two nations which considered themselves as without exception the most civiHzed and enhghtened in the world.

At New York Priestley was well received ; addresses of welcome were presented to him, and he was offered the Professorship of Chemistry ill the University of Philadelphia. But he preferred to live in the country ; and his wife, who had never recovered from the shock of the Birmingham riots, needed rest and quiet. He declined therefore to take up any teaching work again, but spent his time in the laboratory or study — for the most part composing theological works, and repeating with enthusiasm and eagerness the experiments of Volta then being published.

He was now, however, aged seventy, and it was evident that his end was not far off. He was anxious to live six months longer, he told his physician, in order that he might complete the printing of his works.

On February 4, 1804, he finally took to his bed ; though he was still able to read proof sheets and check Greek and Hebrew quotations. In the evening he had his grandchildren brought to his bedside, saying that it gave him great pleasure to see the little things kneel.

HUXLEY'S OPINION 4g