On Party-Prejudice. 27 
for the interests of a party. In a moral point of 
view, the cherishing of such unworthy sentiments is 
highly pernicious. Detraction and calumny are 
the sure product of religious bigotry; and, as a 
keen observer * of human nature has remarked, 
* a disposition to calumny is too bad a thing to be 
the only thing that is bad in us. It is too splen- 
did a vice not to be accompanied with a large train 
of attendants.” Ina political view, religious pre- 
judices are very injurious; they tend to keep alive 
a spirit of faction; and the evils arising from dis- 
union among the members of a free state, are suf- 
ficiently proclaimed by history. 
Lord Shaftesbury has observed, “ that a public 
spirit can only come from a social feeling, or sense of 
partnership with human kind.” If this assertion be 
well founded, it proves the necessity of being 
‘guarded against religious prejudices. For to sour 
the “ milk of human kindness”— to break a pow- 
erful link in the chain of social feeling, which 
binds man to man; and to sow distrust, hatred, and 
all uncharitableness among human beings, is the 
peculiar operation of religious bigotry and preju- 
dice! 
knivesanounted the scaffold, and drove away the execu- 
tioner, in order that they might themselves avenge the 
honour of the blessed Virgin! 1”? 
* Dr. Ogden, 
