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Priestley was the first (unless it was Beccaria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth — that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation. "Extracts from Bentham's Commonplace Book", in Collected Works, x, p. 142; He credits Priestley in his Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768) or Beccaria with inspiring his use of the phrase, often paraphrased as "The greatest good for the greatest number", but the statement "the greatest happiness for the greatest number" actually originates with Francis Hutcheson, in his Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil (1725), - en.wikiquote.org