142 



PREJUDICES. 



Prejudices, see every thing, and because he is surrounded by per- 

 ' fidious ministers." Never do the people attribute to 

 their king individually, crimes, narrow mindedness, or 

 error. 



What then is the tie which binds the people to 

 their sovereign ? They do not respect him on account 

 of his own individual merits or excellencies, nor on 

 account of the advantages they suppose themselves to 

 derive from the form of government of which he is 

 the head. These advantages they cannot ascertain or 

 discriminate ; and of his personal merits they have no 

 opportunity of judging for themselves. But they love 

 and reverence their prince, as the representative of 

 times that are past, as inseparably connected with the 

 remembrances of their youth, as the depository of that 

 blind confidence which, in their early years, they were 

 so eager to grant. He is the king under whom their 

 fathers lived ; and this idea recals the time when they 

 were blest with parents, the object of their first affec- 

 tions, whose happiness was so intimately entwined in 

 theirs, and who did all in their power to render their 

 life agreeable and delightful. The same sovereign now 

 reigns ; or his son or his grandson occupies his place ; 

 and the same system of government now obtains which 

 existed in the good old times, which they believe free 

 from every abuse, because abuses did not come within 

 the scope of their observation. The historian, in his re- 

 searches into the events of past ages, is not unfre- 

 quently surprised to find that kings, distinguished by 

 crimes of the basest kind, and by the grossest abuse of 

 power, have yet been the objects of the love and 

 the confidence of their subjects. In vain has he en- 

 deavoured to trace the cause of this apparent contra- 

 riety. The principle which we are discussing explains 

 it in the only satisfactory manner. It is not the king, 

 individually, that they love, it is the time past, the 

 period of their youth. 



The respect which we entertain for ancient families, 

 for ancient authorities, for ancient laws, for an ancient 

 constitution, results from the same principle. Time is 

 the great enemy of our race, and whatever has tri- 

 umphed over time, becomes clear to us on that very 

 account. But, in truth, we do not admire or value a 

 thing solely and entirely because it is old, but because 

 it reminds us of our childhood and our youth ; for, by 

 a singular association, the two ideas are in our minds 

 closely and indissolubly united. Time past, abstract- 

 edly, would not excite our reverence or interest very 

 powerfully, if it did not bring along with it the remem- 

 brance of our boyhood, and carry us back to that pe- 

 riod when no care and no sorrow was felt, and all was 

 health, enjoyment, and hope. 



Every system of religion, even the most wild and 

 absurd, owes its stability and its influence to similar 

 feelings and principles, and appeals to them as an in- 

 dubitable mark of its celestial origin. That innate re- 

 spect for the doctrines of any religious creed, which 

 reappears in the case of those, who having apparently 

 thrown off for ever the belief of their fathers, yet, after 

 a long interval, return to it with renewed attachment 

 and devotedness ; that slow conversion of those who 

 have been long distinguished for incredulity, and an 

 inordinate attachment to the object of sense ; that feith 

 which triumphs over doubt, after doubt had for a long 

 time sapped the foundation of faith ; that return of the 

 Je;v to his tabernacle, of the Mussulman to his mosque, 

 of the Bonze to his pagod, after having been for a 

 while the victims of infidelity ; that excess of joy felt 

 by the people when Julian re-established the observ- 



ance of these ancient superstitions, which seemed to Prejudices. 

 be for ever superseded by the progress of more salutary "^"V"^ 

 and more rational doctrines, these facts, and a thou- 

 sand similar, are daily appealed to by every theological 

 system, as a proof of its respective dignity, influence, 

 and divine origin. But it is evident that an argument, 

 of which every religion, however erroneous or degrad- 

 ing, may avail itself, ought to be regarded as conclu- 

 sive for none ; and, in truth, it proves nothing else but 

 the powers and the charms of memory, particularly the 

 memory which recals to us the sentiments and the 

 sympathies of our youth. 



Every parent, whatever be the theological creed 

 which he has embraced, regards it as a duty to give to 

 his children what is called a religious education, that 

 is, to teach them the doctrines in which he was him- 

 self educated to strike their imagination with its won- 

 ders to impress on their tender and pliant hearts re- 

 verence and love for its majesty and purity and to 

 remove the fear of ignorance by its protection and its 

 consolations. All the poetical faculties of youth, which 

 are then so brilliant and so susceptible, but which gra- 

 dually disappear as we advance to the stern age of man- 

 hood or of decline, are early associated with the na- 

 tional religion, of whatever character that may happen 

 to be. If the parents have themselves conceived 

 doubts, they carefully conceal these from their child- 

 ren, and wish to transmit to them, pure and unsullied, 

 the faith in which they have ceased to put implicit 

 confidence. If this faith is contrary to the light of na- 

 tupal reason, or to the principal foundations of moral- 

 ity ; and if, in such circumstances, a man feels inclined 

 to exercise his own judgment on the subject-*-to com- 

 pare his belief with that of former ages and to enter- 

 tain doubts of what they believed demonstrably true, 

 the edifice of his religion is demolished before his eyes, 

 often before he can have time to construct or embrace 

 another in place of it ; all his principles are shaken ; 

 he floats in uncertainty ; distrust and scepticism is 

 extended to every object and sentiment ; he regrets 

 the happy time when all was confidence and belief, 

 and when all the distress of doubt and uncertainty 

 were unknown and unheard of. In this disagreeable 

 state of scepticism, few are doomed to continue till the 

 termination of their days. When old age, with its 

 feebleness and its terrors, overtakes a man situated as 

 we have described, the faith of his youth, the faith of 

 his fathers, rush upon his mind with double force ; he 

 regards it as celestial and divine, and unspeakably en- 

 deared to him by the remembrances of his childhood, 

 It recals all the hopes which he had once so fondly 

 cherished ; it re-awakens that love which was once so 

 strong, but which the withering hand of age had now 

 extinguished, and it revives those dreams of the ima- 

 gination which either had entirely ceased or lost their 

 power to please. He now wishes to believe what he 

 had so long doubted, because, in believing, he seems 

 as if he were beginning life anew ; and he at length 

 ends his days under the influence of that faith which 

 he had received from his fathers. 



The remembrances of our early years afford a pre- 

 judice favourable to the state of things as they then 

 existed, whether it be good or evil. This prejudice 

 exercises a most powerful influence on the social and 

 political circumstances of nations, as it, in almost every 

 case, holds out a guarantee for the permanence and sta- 

 bility of institutions, whatever be their nature, with 

 which we have been connected from our youth. It 

 serves as a check to the spirit of innovation, or to the 



