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Science & Education by Thomas Henry Huxley
page 26 of 357 (07%)
following passage in the "Essay on the First Principles of
Government." 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 considering 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 structure 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, it is not surprising to find that Priestley had very definite
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