Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/262

 232 ZEAL FOR AN CHAP, brought into fair proportion with the skill and ^^^' the power of those who address them in print. Already a wholesome change has been wrought ; and if in these days a man goes chanting and chanting in servile response to a newspaper, he misses the voices of the tens of thousands of fellow-choristers who sang with him five years ago. But certainly, at the time of the Eussiau war, the common discourse of an Englishman was too often a mere 'Amen' to something he had seen in print. For a long time there had remained to the general public a vestige of their old custom of thinking for themselves, because in last resort they were privileged to determine between the rival counsels pressed upon them by contending journalists ; but several years before the outbreak of the war, there had come yet another change. The apparatus provided by the constitution for collecting the opinions of the people was far from being complete; and notwithstanding the indica- tions afforded by Parliament and by public writ- ings, the direction which the nation's opinion had taken was a matter which could often be called in question. Some could say that the people desired one thing, and some, with equal boldness, that the people desired the contrary. Thence it came that the task of finding out the will of the nation, and giving to it a full voice and expres- sion, was undertaken by private citizens. Long before the outbreak of the war, there were livinjr in some of the English counties certain