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Public Opinion and the Middle Class
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
Two ancient symbols—public opinion and the middle class— have nearly always been associated in some degree. Public opinion has stood, first of all, for participation in the government of a society. Such participation has raised the issue of the quality of opinion or the quality of the participation in the government of res populi. From the time of the Greeks at least, the middle class has been regarded by certain conservatives, or let us say, Aristotelians, as having moderate, intelligent, and balanced opinion.
Though public opinion and the middle class idea have been often associated, they have each had different and divergent lines of emergence; different theoretical problems have been presented, and some of this development is to be outlined here. Yet at the tense moments of the eighteenth-century revolution, the French Revolution and its children, they were joined together in close doctrinal union at the height of an historical crisis.
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References
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2 Charles A. Micaud has spoken of the sense of guilt of the French intellectuals: “The guilt of the intellectual … is first the product of the intellectual's belief that he is a bourgeois by origin and way of life. He must atone for this original sin. He has economic and cultural privileges for which he must be forgiven.” See “French Intellectuals and Communism,” Social Research, XXI (Autumn, 1954), 290.Google Scholar
3 English writers contributed the word “radical” to the political vocabulary; “liberal” originated in Spain, it seems, around 1812, and spread rapidly to Western Europe. “Conservatism” was contributed by the French through Chateaubriand around 1818. “Socialism,” “communism,” as well as other words of this sort, are likewise French contributions. See Bastide, G., “Notes sur les Origines Anglaises de Notre Vocabulaire Politique,” Revue des Sciences Politiques, 58 (1935), 524ffGoogle Scholar; Bestor, Arthur E., “The Evolution of the Socialist Vocabulary,” Journal of the History of Ideas, IX (1948), 259ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Hill, R. L., Toryism and the People (1929), 36Google Scholar, notes that between 1832–1846 the extra-parliamentary political association in England succeeded in mobilizing and regimenting public opinion. As public opinion thus became effective, the possibilities of the political campaign were realized. The reformers at the time of the Reform Bill in 1832 believed in universal suffrage, and to them middle class rule had become the rational ideal. Even James Mill, that great believer in the rationality of man, had contempt for popular movements. See Mill, to Brougham, , in Bain, Alexander, John Stuart Mill (1882), 363–364.Google Scholar Robert Owen put some of his faith, as expressed in The Crisis, in the new public opinion that was arising in the world. On the influence of public opinion during the early nineteenth century, see Knight, Melvin M., “Liquidating Our War Illusions,” Journal of International Relations, XII (1922), 485ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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It is fairly clear that Bentham turned to democracy after he had discovered the existing ruling class was unwilling to accept his proposals for reform. In his Constitutional Code, Bentham wanted an omnicompetent legislature, with no bill of rights, since, if we have the sovereignty of public opinion, nothing should be regarded as definitive. A bill of rights is conservative, and it is against the reforming spirit. He rejected, of course, the idea of a mixed state and the separation of powers.
On the other hand, the pages of Blackwood's Magazine from the period immediately after the fall of Napoleon to far into the nineteenth century demonstrate the conservative fear of the new power of public opinion. Rationality was not the primary quality of the masses, and yet the Tories were called on to pay more attention to the power of opinion in politics. Isaac Disraeli praised the ability of Elizabeth I in guiding public opinion. “This was the time of first beginning in the art of guiding public opinion. Ample volumes, like those of Fox, powerful organs of the feelings of the people were given them…. In the revelations of the Verulamian philosophy, it was a favourite axiom with its founder, that we subdue Nature by yielding to her.” See Disraeli, Isaac, Amenities of LiteratureGoogle Scholar, new ed. by his Disraeli, son Benjamin (1867), 376, 380.Google Scholar
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8 Ibid., 15.
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23 See Mayer, J. P., Alexis de TocquevilleGoogle Scholar, trans, by Bozman, M. M. and Hahn, C. (1940), 14, 134ff.Google Scholar Tocqueville's judgment on the French middle class was expressed most forcefully in the early pages of the Souvenirs. One of the elements in the prophetic quality of Tocqueville's mind was that as a conservative he could yet reject the middle class. Here is the source of fruitful conservatism.