514 " Liberal Nolions" [Nov. 



man that loves his country would not for its salvation tolerate a little bad 

 spelling. It would be a rare thing for the country, if the books which 

 are swarming every day from the press contained nothing more objec- 

 tionable than a little bad spelling. 



Now it is very mortifying to a man who is capable of governing an 

 empire, not to have sixpence in his pocket, and to have no opportmiity 

 of convincing the world how much he is their superior. I have con- 

 versed with men of all sentiments, but I have found in them all a certain 

 narro^vness of mind, and limitation of idea. — There have been few, very 

 few, that have come quite up to my notion of liberality. — Some people 

 are liberal in one thing, and some in another, but none, except myself, 

 have I yet met with perfectly liberal in every point of view, and upon 

 every topic of human interest. I have endeavoured, and I think suc- 

 cessfully, to keep ray mind free from all narrow prejudices, and it is 

 often a consolation to me, when my breeches want mending, that I have 

 no prejudices. No, I scorn them — I don't mean breeches, but prejudices. 

 The man that is prejudiced is blind to beauty and deaf to truth. I am 

 guided only and always by pure reason. There is not, I will venture to 

 say, one person in a thousand, who is in all his actions and sentiments 

 guided by pure reason. People are slaves to prejudices, confined and 

 limited in their views. Indeed, how can people take liberal views who 

 do not take comprehensive views of things. JMen of business are con- 

 fined to their shops or counting-houses, men in the law are like horses in 

 a mill, moving in a dull round of precedents, medical men see none but 

 the sick and the sad, the hypocondriac and the diseased, and what should 

 they know of the world ? As for parsons, all the world knows that they 

 must be fools and idiots by virtue of their office, they absolutely know 

 nothing, ten times less than nothing ; they walk through the streets 

 blindfold, they go to Cambridge and Oxford expressly for the purpose 

 of learning ignorance ; all that they know is which side their bread is 

 buttered on, and all that they desire is to have it buttered on both sides. 

 As for statesmen, ministers, members of parliament, commons, and lords, 

 they all have their prejudices, they are confined to narrow views of 

 things — they do not know the world, they do not see it, they have no 

 time to look at it, they have no time to attend to it. They must take 

 things merely by report and at second hand. There is in a word no 

 man who can thoroughly understand human life and human nature so 

 well as a man of liberal notions, altogether Mithout prejudices, who has 

 nothing else to do than to walk about the streets from morning to night. 



H. N. 



