No man can be governed without his consent; for government 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.