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
main method by which natural rights are to be defended." "The good and
happiness of the members, that is, the majority of the members of any
State, is the great standard by which everything relating to that state
must finally be determined." In substance, that is to say, if not
completely in theory, we pass with Priestley from arguments of right to
those of expediency. His chief attack upon religious legislation is
similarly based upon considerations of policy. His view of the
individual as a never-ending source of fruitful innovation anticipates
all the later Benthamite arguments about the well-spring of individual
energy. Interference and stagnation are equated in exactly similar
fashion to Adam Smith and his followers. Priestley, of course, was
inconsistent in urging at the outset that government is the chief