Essay on the First Principles of Government

Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768) is an early work of modern liberal political theory by 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley.

Priestley's friends urged him to publish a work on the injustices borne by religious Dissenters because of the Test and Corporation Acts, a topic to which he had already alluded in his Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life (1765).

Between 1660 and 1665, Parliament passed a series of laws that restricted the rights of Dissenters: they could not hold political office, teach school, serve in the military or attend Oxford and Cambridge unless they ascribed to the thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England.

Dissenters continually petitioned Parliament to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts, claiming that the laws made them second-class citizens.

[4] In a statement that articulates key elements of early liberalism, Priestley wrote: It must necessarily be understood, therefore, that all people live in society for their mutual advantage; so that the good and happiness of the members, that is the majority of the members of any state, is the great standard by which every thing relating to that state must finally be determined.