2 On Party-Prejudice. 
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with the assistance of knowledge, reason, and truth. 
The learned therefore, as well as the ignorant, are 
subject to its influence. For the mind engaged in 
political subjects, connected with interest, passion, 
or habit, exercises its faculties with partiality ; draws 
erroneous conclusions; and thus blinds, confounds, 
and leads the judgment captive to its perverse in- 
clinations. If ignorance* be the parent, passion 
and self-love may be considered as the nurses of 
prejudice. 
Nor does virtue protect her votary from its at- 
tacks. It is, certainly, a plant of quick growth in 
‘a vicious and ignorant bosom; but, too frequently, 
takes deep root, and flourishes in the breasts of the 
wise and virtuous. Then, indeed, it becomes the 
source of great moral and political evil. For when 
in matters even of small importance to the welfare 
of a state, the character's, stamped by public opinion 
as great and good, swerve, from the line of recti- 
tude, and yield to the voice of interest, or the clam- 
ours of faction, our ideas of right and wrong are 
confounded, and public virtue receives a dangerous 
wound: and their guilt acquires an importance, in 
* The influence of prejudice, operating on honest but 
ignorant minds, is curiously exemplified in the following 
form of an old presentment by an inquest. ‘* We say,”* 
observe the jury, “ that I. Stevens is a man we cannot tell 
what to make of him; andvhe hath books we cannot un- 
derstand them,” Hakewell, Mod, Tenend, Parl, page 172, 
& 
