Unitarian Radicalism

Unitarian confrontation with the late eighteenth-century political establishment is reflected in published sermons, pamphlets and parliamentary debates. Price and Priestly were only the most notorious members of a well-educated, close-knit and closely articulate intellectual opposition, all the more formidable for dominating the major literary reviews. Focusing on many lesser-known dissenting publicists, this study uncovers largely unacknowledged continuities in Unitarian critiques of government policies, and in Unitarian campaigns against government interference in matters of conscience. The French Revolution was attractive to Unitarians because the new French constitution, like the American Bill of Rights, broke the stranglehold of an opressive established church. Yet this new analysis questions whether Burke was justified in equating British antitrinitarians with French republicans, and suggests that the increasingly strident criticism of Pitt's wartime ministries might have been muted or even silenced, if the Unitarian Relief Bill had been passedin 1792 rather than 1813.