from their popularity. He is less of a worshipper than any
historian whom we can call to mind. Every political sect has its
esoteric and its exoteric school, its abstract doctrines for the
initiated, its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its
mythological fables for the vulgar. It assists the devotion of
those who are unable to raise themselves to the contemplation of
pure truth by all the devices of Pagan or Papal superstition. It
has its altars and its deified heroes, its relics and
pilgrimages, its canonized martyrs and confessors, its festivals
and its legendary miracles. Our pious ancestors, we are told,
deserted the High Altar of Canterbury, to lay all their oblations
on the shrine of St. Thomas. In the same manner the great and
comfortable doctrines of the Tory creed, those particularly which
relate to restrictions on worship and on trade, are adored by
squires and rectors in Pitt Clubs, under the name of a minister
who was as bad a representative of the system which has been
christened after him as Becket of the spirit of the Gospel. On
the other hand, the cause for which Hampden bled on the field and
Sidney on the scaffold is enthusiastically toasted by many an
honest radical who would be puzzled to explain the difference
between Ship-money and the Habeas Corpus Act. It may be added
that, as in religion, so in politics, few even of those who are
enlightened enough to comprehend the meaning latent under the
emblems of their faith can resist the contagion of the popular
superstition. Often, when they flatter themselves that they are
merely feigning a compliance with the prejudices of the vulgar,
they are themselves under the influence of those very prejudices.
It probably was not altogether on grounds of expediency that
Socrates taught his followers to honour the gods whom the state
honoured, and bequeathed a cock to Esculapius with his dying