ABSTRACT
In his Reflections on the revolution in France, Edmund Burke lamented the great transformation which he sensed taking place in European civilization. By the 1760s and 1770s large numbers of the English dissenters, the subdued and rather quiescent descendents of the nonconformist sects that had waged revolution under Cromwell, had already emigrated to the American colonies. Self-congratulation, in fact, was often paired with threats to leave, should Anglican and aristocratic England bear down too hard on dissent. Joseph Priestley's radicalism envisioned a minimal and noninterfering state. This flowed quite easily from his commitment to religious freedom, for there was a close relationship in the dissenting world view between religious dogma and the political and economic concerns of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeois radicals, almost to a man, were scientists or engineers. Price was a renowned mathematician and developer of actuarial science; Thomas Paine was an engineer involved in the development of the iron bridge; and Thomas Cooper was a learned chemist.
