[lxxxiv. 80]

1821 Decr 26

Codification Proposal

?.5 Admission Universal

III Aptitude and Inaptitude

Prejudice

England

Now A word as to interest©begotten prejudice

Though among prejudice the most mischievous prejudices would not perhaps have had existence had it not been for the corresponding sinister interests, yet especially when considered as /the character of/ a cause of inaptitude with reference to the work in question /it may happen to a/ prejudice in this or that shape may perhaps be found more powerful in its action, and thence more pernicious than the corresponding sinister interest. To the number of those who are capable of possessing a share in a sinister interest, the /there are certain /determinate/ limits: limits applied by the/ very nature of the case opposes certain limits: for suppose it shared in by the greatest number of the members of the community an /the/ interest is by the supposition by the very definition not a sinister but a right and proper interest. But to the number of the persons capable of being under the dominion of a prejudice, whether interest©begotten or inbred, there are absolutely no limits other than those which /which apply to/ the number of the members of the whole community. In England it is by their own sinister interest that in England all Monarchs have been /of course been at all times/ led to sacrifice to that particular and thence sinister interest the interest of all the rest of the community /their fellow Citizens/. It is by a conjunct sinister interest that their several subordinates in the several departments of government have at all times by the possession or prospect of shares in the profit of the sacrifice been at all times led /prompted/ to give support and encrease to that same sinister sacrifice. It is by that same interest that they have been led to nourish in their own breasts the corresponding prejudice by which this sinister sacrifice is /never ceases to be/ represented as a right and proper one: At the time of James II In all these minds by the sinister interest was begotten the desire and endeavour to sacrifice to the particular and sinister interest of the ruling one for his own benefit and that of the few that were ruling under him, the interest of the many. By that same sinister interest was begotten in an unascertainable but probably not inconsiderable proportion of these same minds, the prejudice according to which this same sinister sacrifice was a right and proper sacrifice: and that accordingly it was in /on/ the instance /part/ of every individual matter of duty to contribute by obedience and obsequiousness without reserve, to the utmost of his power, to that same sinister sacrifice: a duty the fulfilment of which had for its enforcement the three great Sanctions, the popular or moral, as well as the political, and still more unreservedly than the political, the religious.