imself a very evil name. For what name could well be more full of evil
memories and of evil omens than just this name of Prejudice? Just
consider what prejudice is. Prejudice, when we stop over it and take it
to pieces and look well at it,--prejudice is so bad and so abominable
that you would not believe it could be so bad till you had looked at it
and at how it acts in your own case. For prejudice gives judgment on
your case and gives orders for your execution before your defence has
been heard, before your witnesses have been called, before your summons
has been served, ay, and even before your indictment has been drawn out.
What a scandal and what an uproar a malfeasance of justice like that
would cause if it were to take place in any of our courts of law! Only,
the thing is impossible; you cannot even imagine it. We shall have Magna
Charta up before us in the course of these lectures. Well, ever since
Magna Charta was extorted from King John, such a scandal as I have
supposed has been impossible either in England or in Scotland. And that
such cases should still be possible in Russia and in Turkey places those
two old despotisms outside the pale of the civilised world. And yet,
loudly as we all denounce the Czar and the Sultan, eloquently as we boast
over Magna Charta, Habeas Corpus, and what not, every day you and I are
doing what would cost an English king his crown, and an English judge his
head. We all do it every day, and it never enters one mind out of a
hundred that we are trampling down truth, and righteousness, and fair-
play, and brotherly love. We do not know what a diabolical wickedness we
are perpetrating every day. The best men among us are guilty of that
iniquity every day, and they never confess it to themselves; no one ever
accuses them of it; and they go down to death and judgment unsuspicious
of the discovery that they will soon make there. You would not steal a
stick or a straw that belonged to me; but you steal from me every day
what all your gold and mine can never redeem; you murder me every day in
my best and my noblest life. You me, and I you.

2. Old Mr. Prejudice. Now, there is a golden passage in Jonathan
Edwards's _Diary_ that all old men should lay well to heart and
conscience. 'I observe,' Edwards enters, 'that old men seldom have any
advantage of new discoveries, because these discoveries are beside a way
of thinking they have been long used to. Resolved, therefore, tha