etts, whilst, even when heard or read, they did not carry
conviction to the citizens of South Carolina. Belief, and, to speak
fairly, honest belief, was to a great extent the result, not of
argument, nor even of direct self-interest, but of circumstances. What
was true in this instance holds good in others. There is no reason to
suppose that in 1830 the squires of England were less patriotic than the
manufacturers, or less capable of mastering the arguments in favor of or
against the reform of Parliament. But everyone knows that, as a rule,
the country gentlemen were Tories and anti-reformers, whilst the
manufacturers were Radicals and reformers. Circumstances are the
creators of most men's opinions.

_Third_, the development of public opinion generally, and therefore of
legislative opinion, has been in England at once gradual, or slow, and
continuous. The qualities of slowness and continuity may conveniently be
considered together, and are closely interconnected, but they are
distinguishable and essentially different.

Legislative public opinion generally changes in England with unexpected
slowness. Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ was published in 1776; the
policy of free exchange was not completely accepted by England till
1846. All the strongest reasons in favor of Catholic emancipation were
laid before the English world by Burke between 1760 and 1797; the Roman
Catholic Relief Act was not carried till 1829.

The opinion which changes the law is in one sense the opinion of the
time when the law is actually altered; in another sense it has often
been in England the opinion prevalent some twenty or thirty years before
that time; it has been as often as not in reality the opinion, not of
today, but of yesterday.

Legislative opinion must be the opinion of the day, because, when laws
are altered, the alteration is of necessity carried into effect by
legislators who act under the belief that the change is an amendment;
but this law-making opinion is also the opinion of yesterday, because
the beliefs which have at last gained such hold on the legislature as to
produce an alteration in the law have generally been created by
thinkers or writers who exerted their influence long before the change
in the law took place. Thus it may well happen that an innovation is
carried through at a time when the teachers who supplied the arguments
in its favor are in their graves, or even--and this is well worth
noting--when in the wor