[No. 125. Tuesday, July 24, 1711. Addison.]

My worthy friend, Sir Roger, when we are talking of the malice of parties, very frequently tells us an accident that happened to him when he was a schoolboy, which was at a time when the feuds ran high between the Roundheads and Cavaliers. This worthy knight, being then but a stripling, {5} had occasion to inquire which was the way to St. Anne's Lane; upon which the person whom he spoke to, instead of answering his question, called him a young popish cur, and asked him who had made Anne a saint! The boy, being in some confusion, inquired of the next he met, {10} which was the way to Anne's Lane; but was called a prick-eared cur for his pains, and instead of being shown the way, was told that she had been a saint before he was born, and would be one after he was hanged. "Upon this," says sir Roger, "I did not think fit to repeat the {15} former question, but going into every lane of the neighbourhood, asked what they called the name of that lane." By which ingenious artifice, he found out the place he inquired after without giving offence to any party. Sir Roger generally closes this narrative with reflections on the mischief that parties do in the country; how they spoil good neighbourhood, and make honest gentlemen hate one another; besides that they manifestly tend to the prejudice of the land-tax, and the destruction of the game. {5}

There cannot a greater judgment befall a country than such a dreadful spirit of division as rends a government into two distinct people, and makes them greater strangers and more averse to one another than if they were actually two different nations. The effects of such a division {10} are pernicious to the last degree, not only with regard to those advantages which they give the common enemy, but to those private evils which they produce in the heart of almost every particular person. This influence is very fatal both to men's morals and their understandings; it {15} sinks the virtue of a nation, and not only so, but destroys even common sense.

A furious party spirit, when it rages in its full violence, exerts itself in civil war and bloodshed; and when it is under its greatest restraints naturally breaks out in false-hood, {20} detraction, calumny, and a partial administration of justice. In a word, it fills a nation with spleen and rancour, and extinguishes all the seeds of good-nature, compassion, and humanity.

Plutarch says, very finely, that a man should not allow {25} himself to hate even his enemies;—"Because," says he, "if you indulge this passion in some occasions, it will rise of itself in others; if you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you." I might here observe how admirably this precept of morality—which derives the malignity of hatred from the passion itself, and not from its object—answers to that great rule which was dictated to the world {5} about an hundred years before this philosopher wrote; but instead of that, I shall only take notice, with a real grief of heart, that the minds of many good men among us appear soured with party principles, and alienated from one another in such a manner as seems to me altogether {10} inconsistent with the dictates either of reason or religion. Zeal for a public cause is apt to breed passions in the hearts of virtuous persons to which the regard of their own private interest would never have betrayed them.

If this party spirit has so ill an effect on our morals, it {15} has likewise a very great one upon our judgements. We often hear a poor, insipid paper or pamphlet cried up, and sometimes a noble piece depreciated, by those who are of a different principle from the author. One who is actuated by this spirit is almost under an incapacity of {20} discerning either real blemishes or beauties. A man of merit in a different principle,[117] is like an object seen in two different mediums,[118] that appears crooked or broken, however straight or entire it may be in itself. For this reason, there is scarce a person of any figure in England {25} who does not go by two contrary characters, as opposite to one another as light and darkness. Knowledge and learning suffer in a particular manner from this strange prejudice, which at present prevails amongst all ranks and degrees in the British nation. As men formerly became eminent in learned societies by their parts and acquisitions, they now distinguish themselves by the warmth and {5} violence with which they espouse their respective parties. Books are valued upon the like consideration: an abusive, scurrilous style passes for satire, and a dull scheme of party notions is called fine writing.

There is one piece of sophistry practiced by both sides; {10} and that is the taking any scandalous story that has been ever whispered or invented of a private man, for a known, undoubted truth, and raising suitable speculations upon it. Calumnies that have been never proved, or have been often refuted, are the ordinary postulatums[119] of these infamous {15} scribblers, upon which they proceed as upon first principles granted by all men, though in their hearts they know they 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 {20} this shameless practice of the present age endures much longer, praise and reproach will cease to be motives of action in good men.

There are certain periods of time in all governments when this inhuman spirit prevails. Italy was long torn in pieces {25} by the Guelphs and Ghibellines, and France by those who were for and against the League; 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 concern for their country. How many honest minds are filled with {5} 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 honour and esteem, if, instead of considering them as they are represented, they knew them as they are! {10} 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 {15} 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 endeavours of those whom they ought to look upon as their common enemies, whatsoever side {20} 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 practising those methods which would be grateful to their {25} 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.

C.