PUBLIC OPINION. 413 



parties with whom many political assemblages originate, are the very 

 last in whose judgment and fitness for the occasion we should con- 

 fide. A little knot of parish or club busy-bodies, gifted with more 

 tongue than their neighbours, are in many instances the getters- 

 up of popular meetings in large towns, where gatherings of any 

 sort are sure to be attended; and on which occasions a set of 

 cut-and-dried resolutions are passed, nemine contradicente, for the 

 plain reason, that they always appeal to the pockets and the pride 

 of the listeners; two arguments, ad captandum, of never-failing 

 efficacy. 



One grand misfortune which has followed from ignorant men, of 

 more zeal than discretion, having had the lead on public occasions, 

 has been the misdirection of the popular mind : this has been very 

 strikingly exemplified by the progress and fate of the Reform Bill 

 and the Reform Ministry : no one can have forgotten the almost 

 universal shout which carried that measure, and bore it through 

 an opposition that nothing but the fear of actual rebellion could 

 have sufficed to overcome : neither must it be forgotten, in jus- 

 tice to the people, that the evils under which they groaned were 

 notorious, and that the press and political orators had convinced 

 them that Reform was to act as an immediate panacea for all their 

 multifarious grievances. This over-painting led to the passing of the 

 Reform Bill, and to the ascendancy of the Reform Ministry ; but 

 with the Bill vanished the hopes of the great mass of the public, 

 which could not comprehend why, when they had the Bill and their 

 own idolized Ministry, they should still have the same burdens to 

 bear. 



Another way in which popular opinion has been widely misled by 

 violent and presumptous men is shown, in the utter contempt which 

 is thrown on the Tory party : from one end of the kingdom to the 

 other, the language held at many meetings has been, that the Tories 

 are a party poor in spirit, few in number, and wanting in intelligence : 

 a more absurd language could not be employed ; it led to the aban- 

 donment of the late administration an administration which was 

 utterly powerless when unsupported by the popular voice : the same 

 language is still most unwisely held, and we hear little but the most 

 violent vituperation, levelled equally against the king on the one 

 hand, and his Tory advisers on the other. Let us assure the public 

 that the king, although he never exercises the full extent of the royal 



