such for not having been reasoned out by each individual for himself.

7

This much-abused term is also used as synonymous with social conscience. M. Hanotaux says, "Public opinion is the conscience of the social body." It is said that Vox populi est vox dei is untrue unless vox populi or public opinion be taken as the social conscience. We have already noticed the danger of using a terminology which assumes the organic theory of the state. If by social conscience is meant the consciences of all the individuals composing a public, then this usage is quite impossible. It is entirely inconceivable that conscience should form a bond between individuals. Individuals whose consciences pronounce certain things wrong may be linked together through common sentiment, opinion, or desire; but in the same group, urging the same action with equal earnestness, would be also included those who had reached the same opinion, sentiment, or desire by some other process-prejudice or reason perhaps. Much better admit the invalidity of the ancient saying than bolster it up by such arguments. If by social conscience is meant the definition or content which society at any given time gives to the formal ethical norm which we call abstract right, then it is not public opinion, but law, using the word not in the lawyer's sense, but in its wider signification. Just as the individual gives a continually progressive definition to the abstract ethical normmorality, so society, lagging behind the most advanced individuals, but far in advance of the morally backward classes, also gives a progressive definition to this ethical norm within the sphere of social relationships. This is law and in no sense public opinion; to call it social conscience is only confusing, in that it substitutes for a term with which we are at least somewhat familiar another which requires to be defined at the outset.

Another usage of public opinion which is widespread, even among writers of note on political science, is that which identifies public opinion with one of its organs. The press or the electorate is often confused with public opinion. This, in the first place, entirely ignores the numerous public opinions with which the

7 Contemporary France, Vol. II, p. 618.

press and the electorate have nothing to do. But presuming that these writers mean political public opinion, it is still essentially incorrect. The press is no more public opinion than the characters upon this page are the thoughts which are in my mind as I write them. The electorate, even with the most extended suffrage, contains considerably less than half of those people who habitually contribute to political public opinions; and more than this, the electorate contains, under such circumstances, a great many who contribute nothing to the opinion for which they vote. The man who sells his vote cannot be said to have any opinion (not even a prejudiced one), sentiment, or desire in the matter. He votes in a certain way simply because he has been paid to do so.

We have said that the only form of public which is capable of self-expression is a crowd. All other publics are passive and require organs in order to obtain utterance. In times of intense excitement, or when other organs fail, publics may generate crowds for this purpose. This happened frequently during the French Revolution. The crowd which brought the king from Versailles to Paris was simply the executive of a much vaster public. The crowd which rescued the negro Burns in Boston was accomplishing the will of a public of immense extent. We have spoken of how literary and political publics relied upon the crowds of the salon and the coffee-house in the eighteenth century, before other organs of public opinion had sufficiently developed. But there are other and more customary methods by which publics express themselves.

By an organ of public opinion we mean any agency which gives utterance or expression to otherwise inarticulate opinions which publics may entertain. But just as the Delphian priests who transcribed the oracles of Apollo were in a position to greatly influence the god's deliverances, so the organs of public opinion often exercise a most potent influence upon the opinions which they express. They mold as well as express public opinion. Publics have been compelled from time to time to secure the offices of new organs in order to obtain adequate expression for their opinions. As public opinion has developed, the number of these

organs has greatly increased. In any popular government, it is of the utmost importance that public opinion should be voiced truly and adequately.

Confining our attention now to political public opinion, we shall discuss some of the more important organs. These may be conveniently divided into two classes, governmental, or secondary, and non-governmental, or primary. The former include such as are as well organs of government as organs of public opinion. They are rulers, both elective and hereditary; ministers; legislatures; courts, and electorates. The limits of this article do not permit us to more than mention these governmental organs. They only assume the character of organs of public opinion after they are compelled to do so by public opinion acting through the primary organs.

The simplest primary organ of public opinion is conversation. Diderot, in 1775, in a letter to Neckar, defined public opinion in the following words:8

Opinion! that volatile something, with whose power for good and for evil we are all acquainted, in its origin is nothing but the work of a small number of men who speak only after having thought and who continually form in different sections of society centers of instruction from whence both errors and reasoned truths are disseminated little by little to the farthest limits of the city in which they are established, as articles of faith.

This describes accurately the process by which public opinion. is transmitted and grows in an age before the development of other organs. Conversation is not supplanted by new organs when they appear, but continues even today perhaps the most important of all methods of expression of opinion. Bryce, whose chapters upon public opinion must always constitute the foundation for any study of the subject, has emphasized the importance of conversation in this connection,10 and Tarde has graphically described the effect of conversation upon the formation and diffusion of opinion.11 Other organs of public opinion, especially the press, have exercised a powerful incidental influence 8 Quoted by Tarde, op. cit., p. 83.

'American Commonwealth, Vol. II, chaps. 76-87.

10 Ibid., chap. 79.

11 Tarde, op. cit., pp. 82-148.

upon conversation. Before the era of the press the subjects of conversation were connected with the life of the village or the parish. Different communities talked about different matters, but the same subjects were discussed for indefinitely long periods of time. The press has unified conversation in space and diversified it in time. All the land over the people are conversing about the same matters this morning, but tomorrow they will be talking about a totally different set of topics. This increasing identity of conversation over wider and wider areas is of the utmost importance in developing the power of public opinion. Undoubtedly the spread of democratic ideas is partially due to the increase in the number and complexity of public opinions. But the former has in its turn reacted upon public opinion, and topics which one hunded and fifty years ago were reserved for the conversation of court circles are now discussed with interest and more or less intelligence by all classes. The advantages of conversation as an organ of public opinion are apparent. No special equipment is required; no pecuniary expense is involved; it is not necessary to interest or assemble large numbers of people, and yet all classes and conditions of men can with equal advantage participate in this mode of public-opinion-making. In one's home, or at the club, in the leisure hour after dinner in the society of friends, under the soothing influence of a good cigar, conversation, so far from taxing our energies, is a pleasure which satisfies one of the most fundamental demands of our nature, the gratification of our social instinct. In conversation everything is laid bare; nothing is covered up for the sake of appearances. Men talk about a great many things which they would never write about. Its limitations are likewise obvious. Without the assistance of the press conversation can only busy itself with the gossip of the village; where it is concerned with the affairs of the nation it is so diffuse that it requires itself organs to become definitely articulate. In the multiplicity of voices the words that are uttered are lost; other agencies must be employed to gather and sift the responses of the oracle.

Correspondence has been a most useful organ of public opinion. It is conversation carried on at a distance, and both

enjoys much the same advantages and suffers from the same limitations.1 12 The same causes which have favored conversation-increase of leisure, unification of language, diffusion of common knowledge, equalization of rank-have contributed to render correspondence more active, but under special conditions which affect this alone, viz., travel, which renders absence more frequent; popularization of the art of writing and a reasonably good postal service. The press, however, which has stimulated and nourished conversation has destroyed many of the sources of correspondence. One is not nowadays inclined to sit down and write his friend a long letter detailing the news of his city, accompanied with his own comments and views, as was the custom in the eighteenth century.13 He knows that his friend will already have read the news in his morning paper and have had the benefit of the editor's comment, which is likely to be more interesting and valuable than anything that he can write. Mr. Bryce has also suggested 14 that the very cheap postage which we enjoy today, and the practice of prepayment by means of stamps, while increasing the volume of correspondence a thousand fold, has, perhaps for that very reason, diminished its worth as an organ of public opinion. When one knew that his friend must pay a shilling upon receipt of the letter which he was writing, he would take pains to make the epistle worth the price. With the cheapening of the postage to a penny, the contents have lost their value at the same ratio. With the urbanization of modern life the number of our friends and acquaintances has greatly increased, while the intimacy which characterized the friendships of the time of Doctor Johnson has certainly diminished. What we have to say now addresses itself less and less to individuals and more to groups of increasing size. Our real correspondent is becoming more and more the public. Letter-writing is giving place to an instrumentality better fitted to the wider audience.

Just as books grew out of the monologue or discourse, so journalism is a development of conversation and correspondence. 1 Tarde, op. cit., pp. 148-158.

13 Cf. McMaster, Hist. of the People of the U. S., Vol. I, pp. 38, 39.

14 In a lecture before the Lowell Institute, Boston, 1904.