s argued that such non-rational inferences are merely the
loose fringe of our political thinking, and that responsible decisions
in politics, whether they are right or wrong, are always the result of
conscious ratiocination. American political writers, for instance, of
the traditional intellectualist type are sometimes faced with the fact
that the delegates to national party conventions, when they select
candidates and adopt programmes for Presidential elections, are not in a
condition in which they are likely to examine the logical validity of
their own mental processes. Such writers fall back on the reflection
that the actual choice of President is decided not by excited
conventions, but by voters coming straight from the untroubled sanctuary
of the American home.

President Garfield illustrated this point of view in an often-quoted
passage of his speech to the Republican Convention of 1880:--

'I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its
grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man. But I remember that it is
not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights
and depths are measured.... Not here, in this brilliant circle where
fifteen thousand men and women are gathered, is the destiny of the
Republic to be decreed for the next four years ... but by four millions
of Republican firesides, where the thoughtful voters, with wives and
children about them, with the calm thoughts inspired by love of home and
country, with the history of the past, the hopes of the future, and
knowledge of the great men who have adorned and blessed our nation in
days gone by. There God prepares the verdict that shall determine the
wisdom of our work to-night.'[23]

[23] _Life of J.A. Garfield_, by R. H. Conwell, p. 328.

But the divine oracle, whether in America or in England, turns out, too
often, only to be a tired householder, reading the headlines and
personal paragraphs of his party newspaper, and half-consciously forming
mental habits of mean suspicion or national arrogance. Sometimes,
indeed, during an election, one feels that it is, after all, in big
meetings, where big thoughts can be given with all their emotional
force, that the deeper things of politics have the best chance of
recognition.

The voter as he reads his newspaper may adopt by suggestion, and make
habitual by repetition, not only political opinions but whole trains of
political argument; and he does not necessarily feel the