58 PUBLIC OPINION IN ENGLAND. 



whatever, who can unblushingly depart, publicly, from that strict hon- 

 esty and veracity which is demanded of him in private life, is fitted to 

 legislate for a people or have a voice in the regulation of her civil policy. 

 For this it becomes the people to fix the standard of moral as Avell as po- 

 litical consistency; and if they would prevent their country from sinking 

 to those depths of degradation, from which there is no after hope, it is 

 for them to say to would-be tyrants, and would-be patriots, " we will 

 judge you by a law which you have long forgotten — we will try you by 

 a standard which you have dared to despise! we will pronounce upon you 

 according to your real worth, and shall throw all your blandishments and 

 tinsel and puff and chatter to the dogs, in our estimation of you." 



To do this the people must unite — not for political but for moral pur- 

 poses. They must unite in every city, town, village, and hamlet, and 

 form "SociKTiES of Public Opinion," whose object shall be to report 

 upon the "sayings and the doings" of public men,from the king on his throne 

 to the half-starved Irish member, who peels his potatoes in a " two-pair 

 back." A central society should be immediately formed in London, 

 which should comprise honest men of every degree, and who should dis- 

 cuss the conduct of every political leader. This society should have 

 cori'esponding societies throughout the Empire, who should meet at any 

 particular moment, to denounce with the thunder of their maledictions, 

 echoing far and wide, not merely the political tergiversation of the man 

 who forgets himself, but the moral obliquity which leads man to forget 

 that which ought to be dearer than himself — the law of moral honesty, 

 which God has written in his heart. 



The moral thunder of a people thus raised, would it not be more tre- 

 mendous in its effect than the power of any government that could pos- 

 sibly exist? Such societies would have not political but moral ends in 

 view, and could not be sent to the hulks as malcontents, or strung up 

 as traitors, nor impeached of sedition. The aristocracy and the demo- 

 cracy would alike be held in awe by their sentences of condemnation, 

 and the honest man, whether Tory, MHiig, or Radical, would be cheered 

 bv their ajiproval and the eulogiums they might pass upon their conduct ; 

 and thus, at a time when political terror seems to have slain moral ho- 

 nesty, the people's voice, freed from the rancour of party and the venom 

 of its spleen, would arise in a glory of its own creating, and pitblic opi- 

 nion would be prevented fiom sinking in public estimation, and the 

 voice of the people would be for once the voice of God. 



Lucius Junius. 

 [The pages of the Monthly will therefore be open to the formation of 

 such a society. We earnestly entreat our friends and correspondents to 

 favour us with their opinions in this society, and we pledge ourselves to 

 u«e all our personal and literary means to the furtherance of so desir- 

 able a work. Ed.M.M.] 



