conceit.' No prudent searcher after truth will accept an opinion because
it is the current one, but rather view it with distrust for that very
reason. The genius of him who said, in our journey to the other world
the common road is the safest, was cowardly as deceptive, and therefore
opposed to sound philosophy. Like horses yoked to a team, 'one's nose in
t'others tail,' is a mode of journeying anywhere the opposite of
dignified, pleasant, or improving. They who are enamoured of 'the common
road,' unless handsomely paid for journeying thereon, must be slavish in
feeling, and willing submitters to every indignity sanctioned by custom,
that potent enemy of truth, which from time immemorial has been 'the law
of fools.'

Every day experience demonstrates the fallibility of majorities. It
palpably exhibits, too, the danger as well as the folly of presuming the
unpopularity of certain speculative opinions an evidence of their
falsity. A public intellect, untainted by gross superstition, can
nowhere be appealed to. Even in this favoured country, 'the envy of
surrounding nations and admiration of the world,' the multitude are
anything but patterns of moral purity and intellectual excellence. They
who assure us _vox populi_ is the voice of God, are fairly open to the
charge of ascribing to Him what orthodox pietists inform us exclusively
belongs to the Father of evil. If by 'voice of God' is meant something
different from noisy ebullitions of anger, intemperance, and fanaticism,
they who would have us regulate our opinions in conformity therewith are
respectfully requested to reconcile mob philosophy with the sober
dictates of experience, and mob law with the law of reason.

A writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ [15:1] assures us 'the majority of
every nation consists of rude uneducated masses, ignorant, intolerant,
suspicious, unjust, and uncandid, without the sagacity which discovers