XXXVI. Of those, who exercise their passion for their countrymen, from a belief that they are the most deserving, I am at a loss what to say, although the motive of their partiality in this matter frequently appears to me a voluntary blindness; and if that is the case, they do not stand excused. When the excess of merit in the person set aside, is so notoriously superior to that of the man promoted, that it is manifest to all the world, except to him who dispensed the preferment, what doubt can there be, that he shut his eyes to avoid seeing it? or else, that the microscope of his passion magnified to his view, the virtues of the man preferred, and the defects of him neglected? There is scarce any man, who has not a portion of good and bad in his composition; a man without fault would be a miracle, and one without a single virtue would be a monster. This made St. Austin say, that gigantic vice was as rare to be found among us, as eminent virtue: _Sicut magna pietas paucorum est, ita et magna impietas nihilominus paucorum est._ (Serm. 10. de verbis Domini.) What happens then is, that passion, being to chuse between persons of unequal merit, magnifies what is good in the bad man, and also what is bad in the good one. There is not a more unfaithful balance to weigh merit in, than that of passion and prejudice; but this is what men commonly use for the purpose. This caused David to say, men are false in their balances: _Mendaces filii hominum in stateris._ Job, to express the greatness and power of God, says, that he is able to give weight to the wind: _qui fecit ventis pondus_. But I am not clear in what sense to understand this, because I also see, that the powerful of the world in the balance of their passion, frequently give weight, and much weight to the air. What do you see in that person they have just raised? Nothing solid, nothing but air and vanity; but to this air, the great man who exalted him gave more weight, than to the gold of the other person who was his competitor for the office. But how was this done? Why, together with the air, he put earth into the scale, I mean the earth of the country in which he was born, and this earth weighs very heavy in that balance.