It is not, however, in matters of faith only that doubt is the source of uneasiness. In other matters, whether of a public or private nature, the same feelings are excited : we resist with eagerness the first intimations of doubt, and endeavour to wrap ourselves up in confidence and security. This lulls us into a state of mental repose, which doubt immediately dissipates and destroys. When danger is inevitable, there are few men who at once allow themselves to see it in its true and alarming colours, and even when it may yet be removed and resisted, men not unfrequently allow themselves to remain insensible to their situations, and regard as their enemy him who gave them the first in timation of their danger. ' When a man has been told that his servants rob him, that his mistress betrays him, that his friends are unfaithful to him, or, in a more important case, that his public and political interests are invaded—even when he is told all this, he listens to the intelligence with prejudice ; he believes, or tries to believe, that it is un founded ; he endeavours to preserve the ease and repose of his mind, a blessing which he seems to cherish with peculiar delight. He feels displeased with the person who wishes to excite his fears, he rejects his suspicions and his intelligence, and applauds himself that he is possessed of sufficient generosity not easily to believe evil.
If we endeavour to make him suspect the mode of government under which he has lived, its legislation, its political organization, he will oppose these endeavours with the most obstinate incredulity ; he will defend the system to which he has hitherto submitted with the keener inflexibility, in proportion as it has been less the object of his study and investigation, or in proportion as his attach ment to it has been founded on prejudice. An invincible terror causes him to resist the destruction of all that he has known and admired from his infancy, of which his preju dices will not permit him to examine the consequences. This terror seems to be instinctive, which nature excites in us, at whatever is unknown, and which is often salutary in making us shun dangers, the result of which we cannot calculate.
This dread of new experience, this repugnance to doubt and distrust, this indolence and unwillingness in exercising our faculties on subjects of speculation, to which we have been unaccustomed, are increased and fortified by personal and by national pride. We wish not to allow that we, or those whom from our infancy we have been accustomed to respect, have acted improperly, or have been actuated by bad motives. We defend an ancient system of government, upon which the will of the people have had no influence, on the same principles that we defend a dogmatical religion. There is no one point or department in it that we will con sent to abandon, because, in our estimation, every part being connected with the whole is equally sacred ; which is, indeed, the case when they are all equally founded on prejudice. A constitution, on the other hand, on the for mation and perfection of which reason and judgment have been consulted, is not on every point equally venerated ; its parts are more independent of each other, and it can admit of corrections and of changes to ithout being entirely overthrown.
Such is undoubtedly the principle reason of the unshaken stability of those constitutions in the East, which have enchained the faculties of the human mind, and put a complete stop to the progress of improvement ; and of the division of castes, which subjects a vast proportion of the population to the most hopeless and degraded state of misery and humiliation : a circumstance the more remark able, as few or no advantages result to the higher classes from this degradation of their inferiors. We would at first sight suppose, that this violence against nature could he maintained only by force, and yet the contrary is the fact ; it is maintained against a superior force, if the peo ple, in whose hands it is, knew or chose to exert it.
The Jewish nation have been conquered by people of a different religion and of different manners, who, for centu ries, have laboured to destroy their system; but, in defiance of every exertion, the oppressed classes have submitted to disabilities and contempt ; they never have revolted ; they have not endeavoured to shake of the yoke, even when it was imposed on them by people inferior in resources to themselves. The long duration of Judaism is one of the most astonishing triumphs of prejudice. The Jews have uniformly and inflexibly resisted examination, and the force of every argument brought to refute and counteract their opinions ; and, in doing so, they have entrenched them selves behind the principles already mentioned—the dread of new opinions, mental indolence, and national pride.
Prejudice is, by its very nature, stationary ; but reason is progressive. Legislators, therefore, who wish to impart to their institutions and enactments an eternal duration, have wisely endeavoured to enlist prejudice in their favour, have founded them on the basis of that indolence of the mind which we have been discussing, have prohibited ex amination, and have banished reason from their dominions. They have found in prejudice a power always ready to defend existing establishments against every innovation, however salutary, both to the individuals immediately con nected, and to the general interests of mankind. This plan may be prudent, so far as legislators themselves are concerned, but its results are uniformly injurious to society. With an arrogance, which ill becomes man, they have set bounds to the powers of the human mind, and, in their assumed wisdom, have said, that their actions and views have attained to the standard of perfection, and have endea voured to render improvement impossible. But precau tionary prejudices will not save social institutions, either from gradual deterioration, or from calamities which may overthrow them. Countries where civilization is stationary, being always the same, arc really deteriorating, when com pared with those that are making regular advances in re finement and liberal knowledge. Besides, where social institutions undergo no change, the human character necessarily degenerates, because government, being fixed, neither excites interest, nor affords scope for the exercise of genius and talents; because the arts, which might other wise have flourished there, gradually disappear ; and be cause the stationary character of institutions does not de fend them either against conquests, or against tyranny, or against pestilence and famine, or the numberless scourges of earth or of heaven. When this stationary system is pro posed for our admiration by men who are not ignorant of a better order of things, we arc tempted to ask them, if the hell of Dante would not appear preferable in their eyes to what they propose, since they would possess a more certain guarantee of its immutability ? It is not among the Indians only, where social and poli tical institutions are stationary. All the eastern nations reject, with an almost equal degree of horror, every idea of change, though the actual order under which they live is for them a state of suffering, of oppression', and of ruin. With the people of Europe, even where the subjects of legislation have been comparatively open to discussion, the two terms, innovation and danger, seem almost synonymous; and one class of men are always ready to resist a change without examination, merely because it is a change. The most serious inconv eniences would undoubtedly result from a continual volatility in political measures. But there is no danger against which the universal character of man provides so completely ; for there are no prejudices so strong as those which support the established order of things. .