often has been), it is impossible to appeal to it as a defence against
the errors and extravagances of mere reason. If we talk of common
sense, we are twitted with vulgar prejudice, and asked how we
distinguish the one from the other; but common and received opinion is
indeed 'a compost heap' of crude notions, got together by the pride and
passions of individuals, and reason is itself the thrall or manumitted
slave of the same lordly and besotted masters, dragging its servile
chain, or committing all sorts of Saturnalian licenses, the moment it
feels itself freed from it.--If ten millions of Englishmen are furious
in thinking themselves right in making war upon thirty millions of
Frenchmen, and if the last are equally bent upon thinking the others
always in the wrong, though it is a common and national prejudice, both
opinions cannot be the dictate of good sense; but it may be the
infatuated policy of one or both governments to keep their subjects
always at variance. If a few centuries ago all Europe believed in the
infallibility of the Pope, this was not an opinion derived from the
proper exercise or erroneous direction of the common sense of the
people; common sense had nothing to do with it--they believed whatever
their priests told them. England at present is divided into Whigs and
Tories, Churchmen and Dissenters; both parties have numbers on their
side; but common sense and party spirit are two different things. Sects
and heresies are upheld partly by sympathy, and partly by the love of
contradiction; if there was nobody of a different way of thinking, they
would fall to pieces of themselves. If a whole court say the same
thing, this is no proof that they think it, but that the individual at
the head of the court has said it; if a mob agree for a while in
shouting the same watchword, this is not to me an example of the _sensus
communis_, they only repeat what they have heard repeated by others. If
indeed a large proportion of the people are in want of food, of
clothing, of shelter--if they are sick, miserable, scorned,