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Are Educated Jingoes Honest?
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interview which took place eighteen years ago, and of which no notes were taken either at the time or afterwards. Now, such evidence would carry no weight whatever either in an English court of justice or in any ordinary affair of private business; on the contrary, the verbatim character of the report would rightly discredit it among reasonable men. Yet this has been generally received as the best evidence for the Dutch conspiracy. The application thus implied of a different standard of valuation of evidence to this issue is sheer intellectual dishonesty, for a man accustomed to test evidence cannot apply this different standard and not know that he is doing so. If it is argued that he does not know it, then he has permitted his normal intellect to be disordered by passion, and the 'dishonesty' removed from the specific instance is thrown back upon the process of permitting passion to enter the domain of intellect so as to usurp its functions.