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Page 2 of the introduction to:
The Quarrel Of The Age: The Life and Times of William Hazlitt

Mention of the 'middle–class intellectual community of London' reminds one that Hazlitt was, in fact, born into aristocracy which, had the history of the late eighteenth century been different, even only a little different, might have inherited much of the world. It was not an aristocracy of title or land, but of intellect. In eighteenth–century England the best educated, most thoughtful and independent–minded people were to be found among the Dissenters, so called because they refused to subscribe to the Established church – the Church of England, headed by the currently reigning monarch – on the grounds that no secular authority is entitled to place itself higher that scripture, and that no test of faith and truth can be higher than scripture, and that no test of faith and truth can be higher than an individual's own conscience. Dissenters were therefore disqualified from full participation in public life and the privileges of citizenship. In particular, they were disbarred from standing for Parliment or attending either of the ancient universities. Their response was to campaign with intelligence and persuasiveness for reform, and to found their own academies. These academies were the cutting edge of education in their day; while the old universities dozed on their rich endowments, sated on College feasts and soaked in port, at best and at most requiring their junior members to read a few classical texts, the new independent academies of Warrington, Hoxton and elsewhere taught science and mathematics, history and geography, philosophy, political economy and modern languages. Hazlitt was in no way a religious man – as a precocious boy he was given to sententious pronouncements of a religiose and moral sort, but as soon as he began to think seriously he turned agnostic – but the fiercely explains much about his independence of mind and adherence to principle, traits which he shared with his father and which, in the usual way of the world, did no good to either of them in the material respects of life.
      Hazlitt's father is a key figure in this regard. Square–jawed, square–shouldered, stubborn, uncompromising, sometimes unimaginative, but always kind, William Hazlitt senior was a paradigm – in the end, almost a caricature – of the Dissenting outlook. He was a fundamentalist, but a fundamentalist of reason, not of scripture or mysticism. He had the zeal and purity, the blindness and obtuseness of the typical fundamentalist, and the fact that the idols he worshipped were the Enlightenment values of rationality and autonomy did not save him from the marginalization that all fundamentalists ultimately suffer. After all, success even of the most ordinary kind in life requires compromises; like all true fundamentalists, William senior did not know the meaning of the word.
      William senior's Unitarianism was an adult choice, and a disappointment to his own parents. He belonged to a branch of the Hazlitts which figured among the English Protestant colonists who flooded into Ireland after the conquests of the seventeenth century. His father sent him at the age of nineteen to prepare for the Presbyterian ministry at Glasgow University, where he was taught by Adam Smith among others. While an undergraduate there he concluded that he was a Unitarian. Unitarians were so independent in thought – at least, in William senior's day – that they scarcely agreed among themselves, and certainly did not accept dictation from one another on what to believe or say. Some Unitarians even rejected the label 'Christian' on the ground that Jesus, whom they regarded as a mere man, perhaps even a sinful and fallible one, is no more than a teacher and, at best, an exemplar. Scripture has to submit to reason and conscience, which form a higher tribunal. There is only one God; the term 'Unitarian' registers rejection of the Trinitarianism of orthodox forms of Christianity. There are, oddly, even atheist and agnostic sections of the Unitarian community.
      Into this bulldog mould, fiercely rational, devoted to study, opposed to authority in any sphere but especially the religious, and apt to subject the most mundane matters to hard questioning, William Hazlitt senior fitted as if it had been tailored for him. The result was predictable: he lived thereafter a practically outcast life of penury and insignificance. But it might not have been so if the great reforming sweep of Dissent in the eighteenth century had been successful. If the Church of England had been disestablished, Parliament reformed, the universities opened to all, and religious and civil tests and disabilities abolished – if, in short, pigs had suddenly begun to fly – William senior might have found more appreciation of his virtues, at least in the form of a congregation both amenable to his stubbornly liberal views and rich enough to support him and his family in a decent manner of life. As it was, the French Revolution provoked strong political reaction in England, crushing hopes of reform. When the hopes revived decades later they were no longer of that ambitious, clear, hopeful vintage of the Age of Enlightenment; they had become the piecemeal and tip–toeing reform of compromise and pragmatism. Those who were leading lights in the Dissenting firmament, such as Richard Price and Joseph Priestley, suffered; much more so did their less celebrated colleagues like William senior.
      As it happens, William senior's career began rather well. After adopting Unitarianism he took temporary charge of a congregation in Wisbech, Norfolk, and there met a mild mannered, elfinly beautiful girl, Grace Loftus, daughter of a flourishing ironmonger and friend of another local family destined for fame and notoriety, the Godwins. Grace and her siblings were habitués of the Godwin household. She used to push the juvenile William Godwin in a go–cart round his family's garden, and the link thus established was inherited by her son the essayist, who maintained the acquaintance throughout his life, benefiting considerably from Godwin's help and friendship.
      After William senior and Grace Loftus married they had a pleasant spell tending a small Unitarian flock at Marshfield in Gloucstershire, and then moved to the thriving and handsome town of Maidstone, county capital of Kent, which boasted a large well–built Unitarian chapel at its centre, whose well–heeled congregation provided a house in the next street for the preacher to accommodate his growing family. Today a plaque on the chapel's front commemorates William senior's ministry there, not for its own sake but because Hazlitt the essayist was born there on 10 April 1778, giving Maidstone its chief claim to literary fame.
     William senior had good neighbours in Kent; he enjoyed the friendship of men who were leading names in Dissent and eighteenth–century reform, such as Dr Andrew Kippis, the celebrated Dr Price, and the even more celebrated Dr Priestley. At the house of his friend and fellow–preacher Mr Viny of nearby Tenterden he made the acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin. Under the pen names 'Rationalis' and 'Philalethes' he contributed articles to Priestley's Theological Repository, published two sermons on the subject of human authority in matters of faith (1774), and a book called An Essay on the Justice of God (1773).
     These were promising beginnings among the Dissenting elite, and in other respects too (apart from suffering a common hazard of the time, the death of an infant son) the Hazlitt's time in Maidstone was happy – until a combination of the American War of Independence and William senior's dogged espousal of principle brought the idyll to an end.
      After a decade of incompetent and increasingly provocative efforts by the British government to tax its America colonists, the latter had risen in rebellion in 1775. With much to occupy it at home and elsewhere in the world, the British government's endeavours to quash the revolt were halfhearted and badly organised. Nearly thirty thousand German mercenaries were hired to fight the Crown's war against Briton – but the contempt of the home government so alienated the colonists that, through their experience of revolt, they forged a new and wholly independent identity.
     Almost all liberal opinion at home in Britain was on the side of the colonists. William senior naturally supported them too. Some of the congregation sided with him, the rest did not. The dispute grew increasingly bitter as the years of war passed. Tensions eventually became such that one half of the congregation refused to attend chapel while the other half was present. By 1780 William senior's position had become untenable. He had no choice but to resign his ministry and quit Maidstone.
     It was an unlucky move, the first of many such. Malign stars now seemed to take charge of William senior's affairs. He had to go where he could command a living, and the best he could find was in Ireland, at Bandon in County Cork. There was a camp for American prisoners – of – war at nearby Kinsale, and William senior befriended them, the more earnestly because of their ill–treatment by the soldiers of the 14th Dragoons who were guarding them. He visited the hapless Americans in prison, published letters in the local newspaper to protest at their treatment, and when three of them escaped he hid them from the authorities. His stance made him very unpopular with the troops' 'haughty officers'. He was barged into in the street, and threats were made. Undaunted, he wrote in complaint to the government in London, and through the medium of Dr Price had his representations heard at the highest level – by the Prime Minister himself, Lord Shelburne. An inquiry ensued; several officers were disciplined, and a new regiment was sent to Kinsale to relieve the 14th Dragoons o fits duties.
     This affair was the last straw for William senior. His championing of the American cause had cost him Maidstone and made him and his family wretched in Bandon. Perhaps, he thought, since his troubles stemmed from his friendship towards America, he would be welcomed there as a friend, and rewarded for his help by finding a home and opportunities among the erstwhile colonists. He resolved therefore – against the strenuous advice of his friends, including Dr Price – to emigrate to the New World with his family, and to embrace for his sake and theirs its promise of liberty and a fresh start.

But Dr Price and his other friends were right. William senior had three and a half thankless years of labour in America. Despite Herculean efforts he could not find a satisfactory post, and was dismayed to discover that the puritanical Calvinists who dominated religious life in the new Republic were bitterly hostile to his brand of liberal Unitarianism. Defeated and dejected, and regretting the hardships to which he had fruitlessly subjected his family, he decided that he had no choice but to return to England. He sailed from Boston in November 1786, going alone so that he could find a job and a home for his wife and children to come back to. They followed him nine months later, reaching England in August 1787.