We were not aware that there existed in the midst of our own Country, and in the present day, a spirit of fanaticism, so base, so wicked & so bloody, as to brake forth into a frenzy of unprovoked violence, not only against the most respectable characters, but against knowledge & science themselves.

James Currie (1756-1805) Scottish physician, biographer

Letter (1791-07) to Joseph Priestley for the Liverpool Dissenters (draft)
    (Source)

Following the burning of Priestley's house by a Birmingham mob, which destroyed many of the scientist's papers and experiments. Found in the Currie Papers, No. 58, Liverpool Public Libraries.