is founded upon a contract by which civil liberty is surrendered in
exchange for a power to share in public decisions. It thus follows that
the people must be sovereign, and interference with their natural
rights will justify resistance. Every government, he says, is "in its
original principles, and antecedent to its present form an equal
republic"; wherefore, of course, it follows that we must restore to men
the equality they have lost. And, equally, of course, this would bestow
upon the Nonconformists their full citizenship; for Warburton's
_Alliance_, to attack which Priestley exhausts all the resources of his
ingenuity, has been one of the main instruments in their degradation.
"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