.

To ascertain exactly what, at a given time, is the "public opinion" of
a political group, is one of the most difficult tasks of the
historian.[1] Even nowadays it is certain that the will of the
majority is frequently not reflected either in the acts of the
legislature or in the newspaper press. It cannot even be said that the
wishes of the majority are always public opinion. In expressing the
voice of the people there is generally some section more vocal, more
powerful on account {311} of wealth or intelligence, and more deeply in
earnest than any other; and this minority, though sometimes a
relatively small one, imposes its will in the name of the people and
identifies its voice with the voice of God.

[Sidenote: Protestant public opinion]

Therefore, when we read the testimony of contemporaries that the
majority of England was still Catholic by the middle of the sixteenth
century, a further analysis of popular opinion must be made to account
for the apparently spontaneous rush of the Reformation. Some of these
estimates are doubtless exaggerations, as that of Paget who wrote in
1549 that eleven Englishmen out of twelve were Catholics. But
conceding, as we must, that a considerable majority was still
anti-Protestant, it must be remembered that this majority included most
of the indifferent and listless and almost all those who held their
opinions for no better reason than they had inherited them and refused
the trouble of thinking about them. Nearly the solid north and west,
the country districts and the unrepresented and mute proletariat of the
cities, counted as Catholic but hardly counted for anything else. The
commercial class of the towns and the intellectual class, which, though
relatively small, then as now made public opinion as measured by all
ordinary tests, was predominantly and enthusiastically Protestant.

If we analyse the expressed wishes of England, we shall find a mixture
of real religious faith and of worldly, and sometimes discreditable,
motives. A new party always numbers among its constituency not only
those who love its principles but those who hate its opponents. With
the Protestants were a host of allies varying from those who detested
Rome to those who repudiated all religion. Moreover every successful
party has a number of hangers-on for the sake of political spoils, and
some who follow its fortunes {312} with no purpose save to fish in
troubled waters.

But whatever their