Regarded by some of his contemporaries as a dangerous radical and by others as a prophetic visionary, the anarchist William Godwin had a profound effect on British liberalism and, through his son-in-law, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, on the politically charged literary movement known as Romanticism. In his best-known work, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (1793)--usually referred to simply as Political Justice--Godwin tried to show that the search for political and ethical principles, or "moral philosophy," was essentially the same process as the search for the laws of nature, or "natural philosophy." Inquiry into the philosophical basis of government could establish, he believed, the scientific principles against which political questions could be judged. With these principles established, a political system could be built that was so rational that laws would be unnecessary, since every individual would acknowledge its precepts...