prejudice, but should separate the husk of prejudice from the truth it
encloses, and so try to get at the kernel within; and thus far he was
right. But he was wrong in insisting that we are to cherish our
prejudices 'because they are prejudices': for if all are well founded,
there is no occasion to inquire into their origin or use; and he who
sets out to philosophise upon them, or make the separation Mr. Burke
talks of in this spirit and with this previous determination, will be
very likely to mistake a maggot or a rotten canker for the precious
kernel of truth, as was indeed the case with our Political sophist.

There is nothing more distinct than common sense and vulgar opinion.
Common sense is only a judge of things that fall under common
observation, or immediately come home to the business and bosoms of men.
This is of the very essence of its principle, the basis of its
pretensions. It rests upon the simple process of feeling,--it anchors
in experience. It is not, nor it cannot be, the test of abstract,
speculative opinions. But half the opinions and prejudices of mankind,
those which they hold in the most unqualified approbation and which have
been instilled into them under the strongest sanctions, are of this
latter kind, that is, opinions not which they have ever thought, known,
or felt one tittle about, but which they have taken up on trust from
others, which have been palmed on their understandings by fraud or
force, and which they continue to hold at the peril of life, limb,
property, and character, with as little warrant from common sense in the
first instance as appeal to reason in the last. The _ultima ratio
regum_ proceeds upon a very different plea. Common sense is neither
priestcraft nor state-policy. Yet 'there's the rub that makes absurdity
of so long life,' and, at the same time, gives the sceptical
philosophers the advantage over us. Till nature has fair play allowed
it, and is not adulterated by political and polemical quacks (as it so