Dickson, William Steel (1744–1824), presbyterian minister and radical reformer, was born 25 December 1744 at Ballycraigy, Co. Antrim, the eldest son of John Dickson, farmer, and his wife Jane Dickson (née Steel). As a child he apparently benefited little from ‘the almost useless routine of Irish country schools’ (Narrative, 2), but he was taught classics, logic, metaphysics, morals, and natural theology by the Rev. Robert White of Templepatrick, before proceeding to the University of Glasgow in 1763. His professors there included the political economist Adam Smith and John Millar, the professor of civil law; he also greatly admired the principal, the clergyman William Leechman, a member of the Moderate party in the Church of Scotland, with whom he later corresponded. Under Millar, a staunch whig, he studied the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of government, and concluded that ‘rational republicanism’ had never had a fair trial (Narrative, 5). He left Glasgow without graduating, but his old college conferred on him a DD in 1784.
After fourteen months of the customary ‘trials’ with the presbytery of Templepatrick, Dickson was licensed on 8 April 1767. This presbytery adhered to the ‘New Light’ or latitudinarian side of the general synod of Ulster, and did not require its members to subscribe to the Westminster confession of faith. During the next four years Dickson preached to various congregations in Antrim and Down that lacked an incumbent, and made the acquaintance of many families among the local gentry, including the Stewarts of Mountstewart. On 6 March 1771 he was ordained at Ballyhalbert by the presbytery of Killyleagh (also non-subscribing), and six months later he married Isabella McMinn (d. 1819), with whom he had four sons and two daughters.
As a minister, farmer, and husband, Dickson devoted himself to congregational and family duties until the outbreak of the war with the American colonies. ‘Having paid considerable attention to jurisprudence, in the course of my studies, and read Locke, Montesquieu, Pufendorf,’ he later recalled, ‘my mind instantly revolted against the mad crusade’ (Narrative, 2). He therefore began to apply biblical principles, as he understood them, to current political upheavals, an exercise he would later call ‘scripture politics’. Two sermons, ‘On the advantages of national repentance’ and ‘On the ruinous effects of civil war’, preached to his Ballyhalbert congregation on 13 December 1776 and 27 February 1778 respectively (and published in a collection of four sermons in 1778), provoked controversy in his neighbourhood and led to accusations of sedition. Dickson used these two occasions, both official fast days appointed by the government, to interpret the war as divine punishment for the corruption prevalent in British and Irish society. His themes were the wickedness of fighting against protestant brethren, the damage that resulted from wartime restrictions on commerce, the increasing burden of taxation, and the danger of invasion by France and Spain.
Dickson's radicalism, more unusually, soon took him beyond opposition to the British war effort. When Volunteer companies were raised throughout Ulster in 1778 he was one of many dissenting clergymen who exchanged the ‘rusty black’ for the ‘glowing scarlet’ (Narrative, 10). On 28 March 1779 he preached a sermon, ‘On the propriety and advantages of acquiring the knowledge and use of arms in times of public danger’, to the Echlinville Volunteers, in which he recommended the admission of catholics to their ranks. The outcry that followed was so great that Dickson was forced to remove this passage from the sermon before its publication (1779), substituting instead a plea that the Volunteers should not let the gravity of the international situation reopen old wounds at home.
After almost a decade at Ballyhalbert, Dickson moved to the congregation of Portaferry in March 1780. His annual earnings there – £270 per annum, including about £100 which he earned as master of a small academy – compared favourably with those of his fellow clergymen. In 1783 when Robert Stewart (qv), later 1st marquess of Londonderry, stood for re-election as MP for Co. Down, Dickson served on one of his election committees, canvassing around the county on horseback throughout the three months of the poll. The contest was regarded as a struggle between the Stewarts and the Hillsborough family, ‘or, as it was generally considered, between the court and country interests’ (Narrative, 15). Although Robert Stewart was unsuccessful, his son, the future Lord Castlereagh (qv), was elected for Co. Down in 1790, again with Dickson's support.
By this time Irish radicalism was reviving, inspired by the outbreak of revolution in France. On Bastille day 1792 the Catholic Committee leaders, accompanied by their agent Wolfe Tone (qv), attended a large assembly of Volunteers at Belfast. Tone's address in favour of the catholic cause was eventually passed with an overwhelming majority, following an attack by Dickson on the moderate reformers who favoured a more gradual programme of relief. At a celebratory banquet Dickson joined Henry Joy McCracken (qv), Samuel Neilson (qv), and William Sampson (qv) in toasting ‘the French army’, ‘the rights of man’, and ‘the sovereignty of the people’. On 15 February 1793, when a convention of delegates from the Ulster counties met at Dungannon, they were treated to a sermon from Dickson in which he recommended parliamentary reform and emancipation on biblical grounds. Some idea of the content can be gathered from his collection of sermons, Scripture politics, published later that year. Although the British constitution had been founded on the rights of man, he claimed, its principles had been slowly perverted and the structure transformed into ‘a mis-shapen and monstrous pile of venality, corruption, and partiality’. Dickson urged his audience to attend to the example of the French republic, a ‘great and enlightened nation’ which had ‘opened the temple of liberty for all religious denominations at home, and sent forth her arms, not to destroy, but restore the liberty of the world’. The greatest triumph of the year, perhaps, came in June, when Dickson presided as moderator over the synod of Ulster's annual meeting, and an address was agreed calling for a reform of representation and expressing pleasure at the admission of catholics to the franchise.
Dickson's involvement in the United Irishmen – in both their constitutional and insurrectionary phases – remains obscure. He admitted that he had taken the society's test in 1791 and was frequently in the company of United Irishmen. He visited the Kilmainham prisoners and campaigned on their behalf; he also worked to secure the release of several members of the Portaferry congregation who had been jailed. Both official sources and popular reports confirm that he was appointed to replace Thomas Russell (qv) as commander-in-chief of the Co. Down insurgents in 1798. On 5 June 1798, just before rebellion broke out in Co. Down, he was arrested and imprisoned at Belfast. In April 1799 he was transferred to Fort George, near Inverness, with other United Irish leaders, and remained there until January 1802. Despite repeated efforts to obtain evidence against him, he was never brought to trial.
Dickson's release in 1802 was profoundly embarrassing for the general synod. After all, he had been identified by a house of lords committee as the adjutant-general of the rebel army, and the truth of the charge was widely accepted. Moreover, in the years after his release Dickson adopted a high public profile, taking a prominent part in the opposition to his old ally Castlereagh in the Co. Down election of 1805, and participating in catholic campaigns after 1810. In 1803 he accepted a call from Second Keady in Co. Armagh, with a stipend of £50. This small, newly established congregation was subsequently refused a share of the regium donum (the state subsidy paid to the presbyterian clergy) on technical grounds, but Dickson correctly interpreted the decision as a personal insult, and from 1805 he fought a campaign to vindicate himself against his enemies, which culminated in the publication of A narrative of the confinement and exile of William Steel Dickson, D.D. (1812), a lengthy defence of his political career against ‘the pious and loyal servility of a small, but, latterly, a dominant party’ in the synod (Narrative, 2). Interestingly, while Dickson attempted to discredit the statements of the government informers Magin and John Hughes (qv) regarding his military appointment, he conspicuously avoided any denial of his involvement in the organisation of the insurrection. A brief pamphlet war followed, and over the next two years speeches were made in the synod attacking and defending the book.
Dickson resigned from Second Keady on 27 June 1815 and spent the last years of his life in Belfast, where he depended on the financial support of old friends such as William Drennan (qv) and William Tennent (qv). He died 27 December 1824 and was buried in a pauper's grave at Clifton Street cemetery, Belfast.