1819 March 15 +

II. People Errors

Error 4

Influence

7

2

Nor yet Under all this perplexity, am I altogether without consolation, considering the opportunity thus afforded me, of giving, as I hope to do by illustration, a little more clearness to certain ideas which I have ventured to submitt to the public in this or that former publication: especially considering the hope how faint so ever, which it seems to hold out to me, of finding those poor works of mine receive the honour of being taken for part and parcel of that matter, upon which Your Lordship’s “system of defence” may exercise itself.

The ideas in question consist of that /those/ which bring to view in the first place the distinction between influence of understanding on understanding and the influence of will on will: in the next place the distinction between self-formed judgment and derived or derivative judgment.

Now then, to apply to the clouds raised by Your Lordship’s eloquence those elucidating distinctions The influence of understanding on understanding I admitt and hold to be not only not illegal (heartily do I wish that it were on all occasions legal!) but “ not unjust” – in one word just – in all cases. The influence of will on will, whether avowed or unavowed, I hold to be unjust, in so far as it is employed for the giving determination to conduct in any case in which by law or morality such conduct is supposed to be free: – in every such case unjust; though unhappily, not in every such case illegal.

In regard to the influence of understanding on understanding, what I shall hold is – that, on all questions of public concernment without exception, the exercise of it ought to be left – left not only by law but by public opinion – in a state of the most perfect freedom: on all questions of public concernment in general; and in particular in all cases in which either politics, morals, or – to conclude with the object of highest concernment – religion, are concerned.