Godwin's liberalism grew out of Paine,
Price, Priestley,
the utilitarians, and anticipated the anarchists of the 19th century. "Political
Justice" is his major work of political philosophy. First published in
1793, Godwin extensively revised the work in subsequent editions. The first
edition, though a bit rough, dealing, at times, with marginal speculatory
matters Godwin would later abandon, and representing an evolutionary, rather
than finished, version of Godwin's views, is, in many ways, a much more
radical (and interesting) document, and a much rarer one.
Godwin revised the text through a number of editions, but his revisions
of the 1798 edition were particularly extensive--virtually a wholesale
rewrite. This was the version favored by Godwin:
