middle class is extensive. On the contrary, popular clamour is influential in proportion as the lower class is numerous, ignorant, poor, and fanatical. Popular clamour is an excitement created by, and exercising influence on, the passions of the multitude, who usually form rash resolves, and act without reflection, judgment, or regard for consequences. In proportion as reason exercises its influence on a people, sudden bursts of feeling will be less common, but public opinion will be more powerful. Popular clamour has probably less influence in this country than in any other, owing to the strength of public opinion. If the former occasionally appears, it arises from freedom of speech and action possessed by the people, and the mildness of our authorities; not from any strength in itself. In some nations of the Continent popular clamour may be held under restraint; but should the pressure be taken off its effect would be more influential than in this island, because here it is thoroughly subdued by public opinion. Wherever civilisation and a middle class are spread over a community, public opinion will be all-powerful, and popular clamour impotent. It may happen that on some particular ques tion these may be united; but generally the influence of the one is in an inverse ratio to that of the other. Many years have passed since the following observation on popular clamour was made by an eminent judge*: "I defy any one to point out a single instance in my life in which the popular clamour of the times had the least influence on my determination. I thank God I have a more permanent and steady rule for my conduct the dictates of my own breast. Those who have foregone that pleasing adviser, and given up their minds to be the slave of every popular impulse, I sincerely pity. I pity them still more if their vanity leads them to mistake the shouts of a mob for the trumpet of fame. Experience might inform them that many who had been saluted with the huzzas of a crowd one day, have received their execrations the next; and many who, by the popularity of their lives, have been held up as spotless patriots, have nevertheless appeared on the historian's page, when truth has triumphed over delusion, the assassins of liberty." * Chief Justice Mansfield's speech, 1770. A says, very able writer, discussing this subject, "When the balance of power is duly fixed in a state, nothing is more dangerous and unwise than to give way to the first steps of popular encroachment, which is usually done in hope of procuring ease and quiet from some vexatious clamour. This is breaking into a constitution to serve a present exigency, the remedy of an empiric to stifle the present pain, but with certain prospect of sudden and terrible returns. When a child grows easy and content by being humoured, and when a lover becomes satisfied by small compliances, without further pursuit, then expect to find popular passions content with small concessions. If one single example could be brought, from the whole compass of history, of any one popular passion that ever knew or proposed or declared what share of power was its due, then might there be some hope that it were a matter to be adjusted by conferences or debates; but since all that is manifestly otherwise, I see no other course to be taken in a settled state than a steady, constant resolution in those to whom the rest of the balance is entrusted, never to give way so far to popular clamour as to make the least breach in the constitution, through which a million of abuses will certainly in time force their way."* The difference between public opinion and popular clamour was exemplified in 1844 by the sentiments for peace or war that influenced the two nations, England and France. Public opinion in both countries was strongly and decidedly in favour of peace, and of a cordial and lasting understanding between the two people. Popular clamour was equally decided for the alternative. Public opinion is the idea entertained on any subject by the best informed, most intelligent, and moral persons; which idea is gradually understood and spread among the people, and adopted as their sentiment. Whenever a community is sufficiently civilised to be governed by public opinion, then indeed has it raised itself in the scale of moral existence. There is nothing in the whole fabric of civil institutions so interesting and imposing as an exposition of the everlasting principles of moral legislation. The administration of justice in this country, where the judge, without * Swift's Works, 8vo edit. vol. iii. p. 51. a guard, and without pomp, decides on the dearest interests of the citizen, trusting chiefly to the moral sentiment of the community for the execution of his decrees, is the most beautiful and encouraging aspect under which civil polity can be viewed. Nothing is so venerable as the voice of truth and justice, under the power of public opinion, reaching and subduing the high as well as the low, placing a rampart equally around the splendid mansions of wealth, and the lowly huts of poverty; repressing wrong, vindicating innocence, humbling the oppressor, and publishing to the world theright of every human being to the privileges of human nature. Where public opinion is prevalent, it throws power into the hands of intelligent individuals, and spreads itself throughout all orders of the community. It opens new channels, by which the gifted mind, in whatever rank or condition, may communicate itself far and wide. Through the diffusion of education and printing, an individual may now speak to multitudes incomparably more numerous than ancient or modern eloquence ever electrified in the popular assembly or the hall of legislation. By these instruments, truth is asserting her sove |