th respect to
nobility.[94] Why? Because, when such ideas are brought before our
minds, it is _natural_ to be so affected; because all other feelings are
false and spurious, and tend to corrupt our minds, to vitiate our
primary morals, to render us unfit for rational liberty, and, by
teaching us a servile, licentious, and abandoned insolence, to be our
low sport for a few holidays, to make us perfectly fit for and justly
deserving of slavery through the whole course of our lives.

You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confess
that we are generally men of untaught feelings: that, instead of casting
away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable
degree; and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because
they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted, and the more
generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid
to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason;
because we suspect that the stock in each man is small, and that the
individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and
capital of nations and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead
of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the
latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, (and
they seldom fail,) they think it more wise to continue the prejudice,
with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and
to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its
reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection
which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the
emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom
and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of
decision, skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's
virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just
prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.

Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do the whole clan of the
enlightened among us, essentially differ in these points. They have no
respect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full
measure of confidence in their own. With them it is a sufficient motive
to destroy an old scheme of things, because it is an old one. As to the
new, they are in no sort of fear with regard to the duration of a
building run up in haste; be