On Party-Prejudice. 25 
sacres and assassinations of a St. Bartholomew’s day, 
we are compelled to cry out with the poet— 
** Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum !” 
If religious bigotry do not rage so fiercely in free 
states, where toleration is established, yet religious 
and political prejudices are frequently united. 
When this union takes place, political prejudice ac- 
quires a tenfold malignancy. A spirit of rancour 
and persecuting zeal will infallibly widen the breach, 
which ambition or interest has created. Toleration 
does not, indeed, permit one sect to cram down 
the throats of another, with the point of the sword, 
its religious faith and discipline! Nor does it think 
fit, that orthodox zeal should attempt to illuminate 
the minds of heretics, by fires kindled with the bodies 
of their brethren! Such methods have been tried; 
but the experiment often proved dangerous and un- 
successful. ‘There is scarcely a bigot of the present 
day, in Spain or Portugal, that would not detest 
the barbarous absurdity of such practices. Yet 
such is the weakness of the human mind, and the 
‘strength of prejudice, that, notwithstanding its own 
full enjoyment of freedom of opinion and the bless- 
ings of liberty, it will often survey, with mingled 
scorn and hatred, the followers of another faith. 
And from hence it follows, that calumny, acrimo-. 
nious controversies, and odious names, descriptive 
of a sect, have been productive of greater mischief 
to the people and government of tolerant and free 
VOL. Vv. D 
