V.] JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 119 



" But in the largest states, if the abuses of the government 

 should at any time be great and manifest ; if the servants of the 

 people, forgetting their masters and their masters' interest, 

 should pursue a separate one of their own ; if, instead of con- 

 sidering that they are made for the people, they should consider 

 the people as made for them ; if the oppressions and violation 

 of right should be great, flagrant, and universally resented ; if 

 the tyrannical governors should have no friends but a few 

 sycophants, who had long preyed upon the vitals of their fellow- 

 citizens, and who might be expected to desert a government 

 whenever their interests should be detached from it; if, in 

 consequence of these circumstances, it should become manifest 

 that the risk which would be run in attempting a revolution 

 would be trifling, and the evils which might be apprehended 

 from it were far less than those which were actually suffered 

 and which were daily increasing ; in the name of God, I ask, 

 what principles are those which ought to restrain an injured and 

 insulted people from asserting their natural rights, and from 

 changing or even punishing their governors that is, their ser- 

 vants who had abused their trust, or from altering the whole 

 form of their government, if it appeared to be of a structure so 

 liable to abuse?" 



As a Dissenter, subject to the operation of the 

 Corporation and Test Acts, and as a Unitarian, ex- 

 cluded from the benefit of the Toleration Act, it is 

 not surprising to find that Priestley had very definite 

 opinions about Ecclesiastical Establishments; the 

 only wonder is that these opinions were so moderate 

 as the following passages show them to have been : 



"Ecclesiastical authority may have been necessary in the 

 infant state of society, and, for the same reason, it may perhaps 

 continue to be, in some degree, necessary as long as society is 

 imperfect ; and therefore may not be entirely abolished till civil 

 governments have arrived at a much greater degree of perfection. 

 If, therefore, I were asked whether I should approve of the 

 immediate dissolution of all the ecclesiastical establishments in 



