le, which God has given to direct us, reason. Of all
the troubles, do not decline, as many people do, that of thinking. The
herd of mankind can hardly be said to think; their notions are almost all
adoptive; and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so,
as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet than their
own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they
are. We have many of those useful prejudices in this country, which I
should be very sorry to see removed. The good Protestant conviction, that
the Pope is both Antichrist and the Whore of Babylon, is a more effectual
preservative in this country against popery, than all the solid and
unanswerable arguments of Chillingworth.

The idle story of the pretender's having been introduced in a warming pan
into the queen's bed, though as destitute of all probability as of all
foundation, has been much more prejudicial to the cause of Jacobitism
than all that Mr. Locke and others have written, to show the
unreasonableness and absurdity of the doctrines of indefeasible
hereditary right, and unlimited passive obedience. And that silly,
sanguine notion, which is firmly entertained here, that one Englishman
can beat three Frenchmen, encourages, and has sometimes enabled, one
Englishman in reality to beat two.

A Frenchman ventures, his life with alacrity 'pour l'honneur du Roi';
were you to change the object, which he has been taught to have in view,
and tell him that it was 'pour le bien de la Patrie', he would very
probably run away. Such gross local prejudices prevail with the herd of
mankind, and do not impose upon cultivated, informed, and reflecting
minds. But then they are notions equally false, though not so glaringly
absurd, which are entertained by people of superior and improved
understandings, merely for want of the necessary pains to investigate,
the proper attention to examine, and the penetration requisite to
determine the truth. Those are the prejudices which I would have you
guard against by a manly exertion and attention of your reasoning
faculty. To mention one instance of a thousand that I could give you: It
is a general prejudice, and has been propagated for these sixteen hundred
years, that arts and sciences cannot flourish under an absolute
government; and that genius must necessarily be cramped where freedom is
restrained. This sounds plausible, but is false in fact. Mechanic arts,
as agriculture, etc.,