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Untitled Article
assent . We are , therefore , in some measure , obliged to indulge the habit of reasoning and examining evidence by proxy , or , what is the same thing in other terms , we are obliged to depend upon authority . Now the value of any authority is regulated by the numbers who assent to it . The very ignorant , who in matters of difficulty rely altogether upon authority , have no method of judging between two propositions but by counting the numbers who support each , and believing according as the balance directs . In an early
period of our own history , we find judicial decisions made upon this principle . The compurgators of the Saxon times were friends of the litigant parties , who came for the purpose of swearing to their respective credibility . No sooner was a suit commenced , than
the plaintiff and defendant went out to recruit for partisans , their success depending , no doubt , upon their offers of pay and bounty . At length , the day being arrived , they appeared at the head of little armies , discharging at each other vollies of oaths with a
celerity which would not disgrace more modern and regular soldiers . The judges had nothing to do but reckon the forces on each side , and the points at issue were determined . As all authority depends upon numbers , every subtraction from those numbers must weaken it , and in the
same degree must it weaken the faith of all who take the authority for their guide , and thus they become the prey of doubt , which , as the experience of every one must have proved , is to men in general the most painful state of mind into which they can be thrown .
There is no acquisition made with so much difficulty as the power of contemplating a question day after day , the mental balance vibrating until the preponderance of argument or testimony shall fairly turn the scale . With this view of the subject , we cannot be
surprised at the hostile feelings produced by innovation , or the innumerable attempts which have been made to reduce opinion to one pleasant uniformity , and rid the world of
doubters , cavillers and querists , who , not satisfied to * wear their creeds , as the Swiss peasants do their Sunday clothes , from generation to generation , are troubling the world with strange fashions and vagaries of their own .
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Perhaps these considerations may throw s <> me light on the cause why the most sanguinary punishments have so often been reserved for offences against opinion . If I read in the newspapers of a forgery committed in a distant part of
the country , my reason , to be sure , tells me that , as having been guilty of a crime against society , the culprit ought to be punished , but my feelings are very slightly moved ; the chances against my suffering by the offence are so remote as not to be worth calculation
If , on the other hand , a man has impugned some tenet which I hold dear , I feel my interests affected ; nor is it of the slightest consequence whether the blow was given from my own
neighbourhood or from a distance ; its effect is the same . Thus , allowing for a moment that heresy is an offence , we see a species of ubiquity in the injury which seems to account for the bitterness with which it is avenged .
I must not , I am aware , lose sight of the principle to which I alluded at the commencement of my paper , namely , that public opinion has been made a species of property , nor that an able and powerful body of men was
long dependant on this property tor high rank and prodigious wealth . Certainly , this principle of action is most powerful ; but as it will not account for the bigotry of those who do not feel this interest , so neither will it explain the sanguinary character of religious persecution . We do not find
civil governors punish attacks on them with equal severity , although their existence is as much threatened by rebellion as that of the clergy could ever have been by heresy . Nor must it be forgotten , that the civil governor
holds physical power in his own hands , and is not obliged , as the clergy were , to appl y for assistance to an authority which , being more remotely interested in the controversy , might naturally be expected to act as a check on their violence .
It is absurd to inveigh against the bigotry of priests , as if they were something more or less than men . Like all of us , they are the creatures of circumstances , and only act on others by calling into play the principles of the human mind . It is unjust to describe them as the monopolists of persecution : they wouM have been
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The Nonconformist . No . XXI . 45 &
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1821, page 453, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2503/page/13/
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