are false, or at best very doubtful. When they have laid these foundations of scurrility, it is no wonder that their superstructure is every way answerable to them. If this shameless practice of the present age endures much longer,1 praise and reproach will cease to be motives of action in good 2 men.

3

There are certain periods of time in all governments when this inhuman spirit prevails. Italy was long torn in pieces by the Guelphs and Ghibellines, and France by those who were for and against the League: 4 but it is very unhappy for a man to be born in such a stormy and tempestuous season. It is the restless ambition of artful men that thus breaks a people into factions, and draws several well-meaning persons to their interest by a specious 5 concern for their country. How many honest minds are filled with uncharitable and barbarous notions, out of their zeal for the public good! What cruelties and outrages would they not commit against men of an adverse party, whom they would honor and esteem, if, instead of considering them as they are represented, they knew them as they are! Thus are persons of the greatest probity seduced into shameful errors and prejudices, and made bad men even by that noblest of principles, the "love of their country.' I cannot here forbear mentioning the famous Spanish proverb, "If there were neither fools nor knaves in the world, all people would be of one mind."

For my own part, I could heartily wish that all honest. men would enter into an association for the support of one another against the endeavors of those whom they ought

"Is this logical?

'In Dante's time the Guelphs were the partisans of the Pope, and the Ghibellines those of the German emperors.

The Guises were at the head of the Confederation of the League, which made war upon the Bourbon princes with great fury from the Massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572) till the accession of Henry of Navarre (1589).

5 Ostensible; pretended.

6

Find Madame Roland's famous apostrophe to Liberty, as she stood upon the scaffold.

to look upon as their common enemies, whatsoever side they may belong to. Were there such an honest body of neutral forces, we should never see the worst of men in great figures of life, because they are useful to a party; nor the best unregarded, because they are above practicing those methods which would be grateful to their faction. We should then single every criminal out of the herd, and hunt him down, however formidable and overgrown he might appear: on the contrary, we should shelter distressed innocence, and defend virtue, however beset with contempt or ridicule, envy, or defamation. In short, we should not any longer regard our fellow subjects as whigs or tories, but should make the man of merit our friend, and the villain our enemy.1 C.

1

There is a long and interesting note on party spirit in Addison's time in G. W. Greene's edition of Addison's Works, vol. iv., p. 344.

XXIII.

PARTY PREJUDICE.

[Spectator No. 126. Wednesday, July 25, 1711. Addison.]

Tros Rutulusve fuat, nullo discrimine habebo.

VIRGIL.

In my yesterday's paper, I proposed that the honest men of all parties should enter into a kind of association for the defence of one another and the confusion of their common enemies. As it is designed this neutral body should act with a regard to nothing but truth and equity, and divest themselves of the little heats and prepossessions that cleave to parties of all kinds, I have prepared for them the following form of an association, which may express their intentions in the most plain and simple manner:

We whose names are hereunto subscribed, do solemnly declare that we do in our consciences believe two and two make four; and that we shall adjudge any man whatsoever to be our enemy who endeavors to persuade us to the contrary.

We are likewise ready to maintain, with the hazard of all that is near and dear to us, that six is less than seven in all times and all places, and that ten will not be more three years hence than it is at present.

And we

We do also firmly declare, that it is our resolution as long as we live to call Black black, and White white. shall upon all occasions oppose such persons that,1 any day of the year, shall call Black white, or White black, with the utmost peril of our lives and fortunes.

upon

Were there such a combination of honest men, who without any regard to places would endeavor to extirpate

1 1 As.

all such furious zealots as would sacrifice one half of their country to the passion and interest of the other; as also such infamous hypocrites that1 are for promoting their own advantage under color of the public good; with all the profligate, immoral retainers to each side, that have nothing to recommend them but an implicit submission to their leaders; 2-we should soon see that furious party spirit extinguished, which may in time expose us to the derision and contempt of all the nations about us.

A member of this society that would thus carefully employ himself in making room for merit, by throwing down the worthless and depraved part of mankind from those conspicuous stations of life to which they have been sometimes advanced, and all this without any regard to his private interest, would be no small benefactor to his country.

I remember to have read in Diodorus Siculus 3 an account of a very active little animal, which I think he calls the ichneumon, that makes it the whole business of his life to break the eggs of the crocodile, which he is always in search after. This instinct is the more remarkable because the ichneumon never feeds upon the eggs he has broken, nor in any other way finds his account in them. Were it not for the incessant labors of this industrious animal, Egypt, says the historian, would be overrun with crocodiles; for the Egyptians are so far from destroying those pernicious creatures that they worship them as gods.

If we look into the behavior of ordinary partisans, we shall find them far from resembling this disinterested animal, and rather acting after the example of the wild Tartars, who are ambitious of destroying a man of the most extraordinary parts and accomplishments, as thinking that upon his decease the same talents, whatever post they qualified him for, enter of course into his destroyer.

'As.

3

2 The "bosses" of to-day. Bibliothecae Historicae, book i., § 35.

As in the whole train of my speculations I have endeavored, as much as I am able, to extinguish that pernicious spirit of passion and prejudice which rages with the same violence in all parties, I am still the more desirous of doing some good in this particular because I observe that the spirit of party reigns more in the country than in the town. It here contracts a kind of brutality and rustic fierceness to which men of a politer conversation are wholly strangers. It extends itself even to the return of the bow and the hat; and at the same time that the heads of parties preserve toward one another an outward show of good breeding, and keep up a perpetual intercourse of civilities, their tools that are dispersed in these outlying parts will not so much as mingle together at a cock-match. This humor fills the country with several periodical meetings of Whig jockeys and Tory fox-hunters, not to mention the innumerable curses, frowns, and whispers it produces at a quarter sessions.

I do not know whether I have observed, in any of my former papers, that my friends Sir Roger de Coverley and Sir Andrew Freeport are of different principles; the first of them inclined to the landed and the other to the moneyed interest.1 This humor is so moderate in each of them that it proceeds no farther than to an agreeable raillery, which very often diverts the rest of the club. I find, however, that the knight is a much stronger Tory in the country than in town, which, as he has told me in my ear, is absolutely necessary for the keeping up his interest. In all our journey from London to his house we did not so much as bait at a Whig inn; or if by chance the coachman stopped at a wrong place, one of Sir Roger's servants would ride up to his master full speed, and whisper to him that the master of the house was against such an one in the last election. This often betrayed us into hard beds and bad cheer; for we were not so inquisitive about the inn as the

'Which was the Whig and which the Tory?