12
of judgment," and becoming the mere "servile mouthpieces of their inferiors in knowledge"?[1]
In your "Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform," which was published in 1859, you made a remark, with reference to the corrupting influence of the ballot on national morality, which, as it bears upon this point, I shall take the liberty of quoting:—
"There are few points in which the English, as a people, are entitled to the moral pre-eminence with which they are accustomed to compliment themselves at the expense of other nations; but of these points, perhaps the one of greatest importance is, that the higher classes do not lie, and the lower, though mostly habitual liars, are ashamed of lying.[2] To run any risk of weakening this feeling—a difficult one to create, or, when once gone, to restore—would be a permanent evil too great to be incurred for so very temporary a benefit as the ballot would confer, even on the most exaggerated estimate of its necessity."
This was your sober and well-matured opinion, in 1859, when you were a writer of books." What your opinion may be
- ↑ The besetting, the degrading vice of America is the moral cowardice by which men are led to truckle to what is called public opinion, though this opinion is as inconsistent as the winds—though, in all cases that enlist the feelings of factions, there are two, and sometimes twenty, each differing from all the others, and though, nine times in ten, these opinions are mere engines set in motion by the most corrupt and least respectable portion of the community, for unworthy purposes.—J. Fenimore Cooper.The Englishman is so much attached to his independence that he instinctively resists every effort to invade it, and nothing would be more likely to arouse him than to say the mass thinks differently from himself; whereas the American ever seems ready to resign his own opinion to that which is made to seem to be the opinion of the public. I say seems to be, for so manifest is the power of public opinion, that one of the commonest expedients of all American managers is to create an impression that the public thinks in a particular way, in order to bring the common mind into subjection,—Ibid.
- ↑ Englishmen are blunt in saying what they think, sparing of promises, and they require plain dealing of others. We will not have to do with a man in a mask. Let us know the truth. … To be king of their word is their pride. When they unmask cant, they say "the English of this is," &c.; and to give the lie is the extreme insult. The phrase of the lowest of the people is "honour bright," and their vulgar phrase, "his word is as good as his bond." They hate shuffling and equivocation, and the cause is damaged in the public opinion on which any paltering can be fixed.—Emerson's English Traits.
