28 



JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 



by substituting " happiness " for " good," has con- 

 verted a noble into an ignoble principle. But I do 

 not call to mind that there is any utterance in 

 Locke quite so outspoken as the following passage 

 in the " Essay on the First Principles of Govern- 

 ment." After laying down as " a fundamental 

 maxim in all Governments," the proposition that 

 " kings, senators, and nobles " are " the servants 

 of the public," Priestley goes on to say : 



"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 

 servants who had abused their trust, or from altering the 

 whole form of their government, if it appeared to be of a struc- 

 ture so liable to abuse ? " 



As a Dissenter, subject to the operation of the 

 Corporation and Test Acts, and as a Unitarian 

 excluded from the benefit of the Toleration Act, 



