[lxxxiv. 82]

1821 Decr 28

Codification Proposal

?.5 Admission Universal

III. Aptitude and Inaptitude

Prejudice.

Not only by the extent of which it is susceptible © by the unlimitedness of the numbers of those who are capable of sharing in it © is interest©begotten prejudice preeminently pernicious in comparison of the correspondent sinister interest, but also by the firmness of the hold which it takes on the mind. Those who are bound /engaged/ to course in question by no other tie than that of sinister interest may by sinister interest operating in an opposite direction be engaged in a moment engaged in a course directly opposite: whereas when once the mind is engaged in the trammels of prejudice, although it may have had its origin in sinister interest, there is no saying with what pertinacity and for what length of time it may not persevere in that same course: persevere in spite of the opposite action of ever so strong a force of interest © of interest in which ever direction operating.

Frenchmen who being without prejudice, and at the same time preferring to his share in the universal interest each man the share he had in possession or expectancy in the particular and sinister interest of the ruling few, might in his attachment have vibrated any number of times between Lewis and Napoleon /a Capet and a Bonaparte/: while the multitude of those who, having no chance or expectations of advancement in the event of the restoration of the antient regime, persevered in their attachment, remained of course if there were any such attached to the old regime and would still at any time, expose themselves to a danger more or less considerable, for the purpose of restoring it. In so far as his conduct is determined by prejudice alone, he is what in English is termed a man of ”principle•: a man of principle, in contradistinction to a man whose conduct is determined by what in his eyes says the correspondent phrase is ”his interest•: and a man of principle he may be © this appellation may when applied to him be a proper one, even in the case where the attachment in question had even in the breast of this same man no other origin than a sinister interest.