n 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, oppressed--an d if each feeling it in himself, they all say so
with one voice and one heart, and lift up their hands to second their
appeal, this I should say was but the dictate of common sense, the cry
of nature. But to waive this part of the argument, which it is needless
to push farther,--l believe that the best way to instruct mankind is
not by pointing out to them their mutual errors, but by teaching them
to think rightly on indifferent matters, where they will listen with
patience in order to be amused, and where they do not consider a
definition or a syllogism as the greatest injury you can offer them.

There is no rule for expression. It is got at sol