adation.
"Unbounded liberty in matters of religion," which means the abolition of
the Establishment, promises to be "very favorable to the best interests
of mankind."

So far the book might well be called an edition of Rousseau for English
Nonconformists; but there are divergences of import. It can never be
forgotten in the history of political ideas that the alliance of Church
and State made Nonconformists suspicious of government interference.
Their original desire to be left unimpeded was soon exalted into a
definite theory; and since political conditions had confined them so
largely to trade none felt as they did the hampering influence of
State-restrictions. The result has been a great difficulty in making
liberal doctrines in England realize, until after 1870, the organic
nature of the State. It remains for them almost entirely a police
institution which, once it aims at the realization of right, usurps a
function far better performed by individuals. There is no sense of the
community; all that exists is a sum of private sentiments. "Civil
liberty," says Priestley, "has been greatly impaired by an abuse of the
maxim that the joint understanding of all the members of a State,
properly collected, must be preferable to that of individuals; and
consequently that the more the cases are in which mankind are governed
by this united reason of the whole community, so much the better;
whereas, in truth, the greater part of human actions are of such a
nature, that more inconvenience would follow from their being fixed by
laws than from their being left to every man's arbitrary will." If my
neighbor assaults me, he suggests, I may usefully call in the police;
but where the object is the discovery of truth, the means of education,
the method of religious belief, individual initiative is superior to
State action. The latter produces an uniform result "incompatible with
the spirit of discovery." Nor is such attempt at uniform conditions just
to posterity; men have no natural right to judge for the future. Men are
too ignorant to fix their own ideas as the basis of all action.

Priestley could not escape entirely the bondage of past tradition; and
the metaphysics which Bentham abhorred are scattered broadcast over his
pages. Nevertheless the basis upon which he defended his ideas was a
utilitarianism hardly less complete than that which Bentham made the
instrument of revolution. "Regard to the general good," he says, "is the
ma