An Address to 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
- Joseph Priestley (author)
- Jack P. Greene (collection editor)
Written by Joseph Priestley in 1774 and timed to coincide with a British general election, this pamphlet urges Protestant Dissenters to use their votes in defense of both civil liberty and the American colonies. Priestley argues that the rights of the colonists and the rights of Dissenters at home are bound together — that the same arbitrary parliamentary power threatening American self-governance was the power that denied Dissenters full civil and religious equality under the Test and Corporation Acts.
He calls on his fellow Dissenters to reject candidates who supported coercive measures against America, framing the election as a pivotal moment in which voters could either check the growth of tyranny or enable it. Throughout, Priestley weaves together Nonconformist theology, Whig political principles, and sympathy for the American cause into an urgent civic appeal, insisting that the friends of liberty in Britain and in the colonies share a common struggle.
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The text of these 18th century pamphlets has been converted by machine from scanned PDFs of the original microfilm copies. While the text has been machine-proofed, transcription errors may still remain. For example, the 18th-century long S, ſ , may be rendered as “f,” some words may be incorrectly transcribed, and there may be repeated words or phrases.