Priestley's friends urged him to publish a work on the injustices borne by Dissenters, a topic to which he had already alluded in his "Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life" (1765). The result was Priestley's "Essay on the First Principles of Government", which Priestley's major modern biographer calls his "most systematic political work," in 1768. The book went through three English editions and was translated into Dutch. Jeremy Bentham credited it with inspiring his "greatest happiness principle." The "Essay on Government" is not strictly utilitarian, however; like all of Priestley's works, it is infused with the belief that society is progressing towards perfection. Although much of the text rearticulates John Locke's arguments from his "Two Treatises on Government" (1689), it also makes a useful distinction between political and civil rights and argues for protection of extensive civil rights. He distinguishes between a private and a public sphere of governmental control; education and religion, in particular, he maintains, are matters of private conscience and should not be administered by the state. As Kramnick states, "Priestley's fundamental maxim of politics was the need to limit state interference on individual liberty." For early liberals like Priestley and Jefferson, the "defining feature of liberal politics" was its emphasis on the separation of church and state. In a statement that articulates key elements of early liberalism and anticipates utilitarian arguments, Priestley wrote: