JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 127 



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 gover- 

 nors 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 at- 

 tempting 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 Cor- 

 poration and Test Acts, and as a Unitarian, excluded 

 from the benefit of the Toleration Act, it is not sur- 

 prising 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 dissolu- 

 tion of all the ecclesiastical establishments in Europe, I should an- 

 swer, No. . . . Let experiment be first made of alterations, or, 

 which is the same thing, of better establishments than the present. 

 Let them be reformed in many essential articles, and then not 

 thrown aside entirely till it be found by experience that no good can 

 be made of them." 



