seemed scandalously cynical to the young reformers who, when his articles first appeared in the Fortnightly Review, were proposing to 'shoot Niagara.' He admitted that the British Constitution was a whole mass of fictions; its ostensible principles were a mere cover for totally inconsistent practice; and yet that was one of its chief merits. It was a vast make-believe, involving an 'organised hypocrisy,' and for that reason the best of all possible Constitutions. We deify a king in sentiment as we once deified him in doctrine. 'This illusion has been, and still is, of incalculable benefit to the human race.' The 'theatrical show of society' impresses the popular imagination; and the 'climax of the play is the Queen.' … 'Philosophers may deride the superstition, but the results are inestimable.' A Cabinet Government is only possible for 'deferential nations': men who can delegate power to 'superior persons.' Public opinion is supreme, and public opinion is the opinion of 'the bald-headed man at the back of the omnibus'—whom, in modern slang, we call 'the man in the street.'[1] He is totally incapable of forming any rational opinion upon any political
- ↑ Emerson uses the phrase in the essay on Napoleon in Representative Men.
