Unpopularity

“ I am neither so foolish nor so unfortunate as to desire unpopularity when I do not believe that I am doing any good. But a loyal citizen ought, in my judgement, to care more for the safety of his country's fortunes than for the popularity of his utterances. ”

“ As soon as their power asserts itself, their unpopularity begins and gradually becomes universal. Hoots of execration arise around them, abominable accusations, scandalous law cases in which they appear as corruptors and felons. ”

“ Every day experience demonstrates the fallibility of majorities. It palpably exhibits, too, the danger as well as the folly of presuming the unpopularity of certain speculative opinions an evidence of their falsity. A public intellect, untainted by gross superstition, can nowhere be appealed to. ”

“ One of the arts was to raise a quarrel with unpopular men who were odious to the people, and then try to be elected upon the unpopularity of others, as well as upon his own popularity. These modes of electioneering were not true of all the candidates, nor perhaps of half of them, very many of them being gentlemen of first-class integrity. ”

“ But we often hear it said—and, I fear, not without reason—that in our democracy as well as in others, public opinion—a term which is not seldom used to dignify a widespread prejudice, or an unreasoning craze—exercises a tyrannical sway, and that there are many people whose dread of becoming unpopular, or of incurring the displeasure of the influential elements of society, yield obedience to that power as readily as if it were a monarch with soldiers and jailers at his heels. ”

“ Nay, why do foolish politicians strive
To win a fleeting popularity?
In vain, in vain, they jealously contrive
To turn the doting Public Eye from Me.
What was this land, this nation, destined for?
For Art, Trade, Politics? All out of place. ”

“ But the opinion of a similar majority, imposed as a law on the minority, on questions of self-regarding conduct, is quite as likely to be wrong as right; for in these cases public opinion means, at the best, some people's opinion of what is good or bad for other people; while very often it does not even mean that; the public, with the most perfect indifference, passing over the pleasure or convenience of those whose conduct they censure, and considering only their own preference. ”

“ An uprising of the people such as we behold will not occur every day, nor every year, for it must spring from the spontaneous impulse of the popular mind. Disappoint the high expectations brought forth by that spontaneous impulse, and you have not only lost a great opportunity, but you have struck a blow at the confidence which the people have in themselves, and for a long time popular reform movements will not rise again under the weight of the discredit which you will have brought upon them. ”

“ Where parties prevail, a principal way to gain popularity is, to act foolishly for one side, and wickedly against the other: And therefore some publick talkers have grown popular, by calling those whom they disliked by bitter and ill-bred names ”

“ Is not public opinion formed by such feelings? and is it not a dark and demoralising system to draw this veil over human actions, to say to the mass, be base, and you will not be despised; be virtuous, and you will not be honoured? ”

“ What good came of these polemics? Very little, I am bound to say. Novelties, whether they are really new or only seem to be so, have the power of seducing and exciting innumerable intellects among the mass of those who cannot grasp the truth, but who respond at once to clamorous fanaticism. In number such folk infinitely exceed the small minority who, remaining loyal to truth, seek her even at the bottom of the well into which imposture plunges her. ”

“ The inclinations of the people have, in all ages, been too variable for regard. But if by popularity be meant that settled confidence and lasting esteem, which a good government may justly claim from the subject, I am far from denying that it is truly desirable; and that no wise man ever disregarded it. But this popularity, my lords, is very consistent with contempt of riotous clamours, and of mistaken complaints; and is often only to be obtained by an opposition, to the reigning opinions, and a neglect of temporary discontents ”

“ Though he likes popularity—and who does not?—yet no consideration of public favor can frighten him from speaking his mind, from saying what he believes to be true, from saying what he believes that the people ought to hear. ”

“ He must dare to be temporarily unpopular, if only in that way he can get a temporary hearing for the truths which the people ought to have presented to them. He is to execute the popular will, but he is not to neglect shaping it. ”

“ Let the people be ignorant and suffrage universal, a very few men will control the state, and laugh at the folly of the applauding multitude whose bread they waste, and on whose necks they ride to insolence and miserable fame. ”

“ The best side of their character is that which people are anxious to show, even to those who are no better than themselves. People will give dishonest or mean votes from lucre, from malice, from pique, from personal rivalry, even from the interests or prejudices of class or sect, more readily in secret than in public. And cases exist—they may come to be more frequent—in which almost the only restraint upon a majority of knaves consists in their involuntary respect for the opinion of an honest minority. ”

“ If this might have been assumed as a thing of course, and if therefore it might have been confidently reckoned on, that the more improving of the people would receive from the ranks above them a salutary influence, similar to that which we have been supposing they will themselves exert on a part of the vulgar mass below them, there had been a happy omen for the community; and if it may not be so assumed, are we to have the disgraceful deficiencies of the upper classes pleaded as an argument against raising the lower from their degradation? ”

“ Must the wise, the virtuous and worthy part of the community, who constituted a very great majority, surrender their liberty, and involve their posterity in misery, in complaisance to a detestable, though small, party of knaves, and a despicable, though more numerous, company of fools? ”

“ Still, some one replies, they are probably disinterested, for they follow popular prejudices, and not their own particular, individual wishes.
Yes, that is just what the masses believe, [27] while they forget that there is nothing easier than to simulate popular passion in order to win popular confidence and become a political personage. If disinterestedness is really so essential to the people, only those should be elected who oppose the popular will and who show thereby that they do not want to be elected. ”

“ And the more public affairs become the concern of a special group of men with dubious reputations, the more politics are shunned by the average citizen. Home life and business, social life and amusements, aesthetic, intellectual, and religious interests, are so much more attractive to him, that he gives little heed to political conditions, lets himself be duped by newspaper talk, and votes blindly some party ticket, without realizing his gullibility and his poor citizenship. ”

“ The world is, however, full of wicked passions; and wicked passions find fertile soil in political parties, social classes, and public opinion—that vague power which has come so much to the fore in the last hundred years. ”

“ Although it may be said with certainty that public opinion in all parts of the country is turning in its favor, yet the obstacles which so long have stood in its way, whether they consist in adverse opinions conscientiously formed, or stubborn resentments clouding the better judgment of men, or a narrow-minded partisan spirit ready to sacrifice the public good to selfish ends, are by no means overcome. ”

“ Timidity, rashness, prejudice, personal rivalries, and the still less worthy influences of calculating self-interest or of a narrow ambition, dwarf and vitiate a policy not less surely than do the impediments due to popular ignorance and incompetence. ”

“ When I refer to signal instances of unpopular opinions delivered and maintained by men who may well be supposed to have no view but the public good, I do not mean to renew the discussion of such opinions. ”

“ Men who love that bloated vanity called public opinion, think all is well if they have once got their bantling through a sufficient course of speeches and cheerings, of one, two, or three public meetings, as if they could do any thing: they vote and vote, cry hurrah on both sides, no man responsible, no man caring a pin. ”

“ And that is a popular government, Hugh, in which it tells so strongly against a man to render him unpopular, that not one man in a million has the moral courage to resist public opinion, even when he is right. ”

“ Resulting from these conditions in a manner not difficult to trace, wholesome national sentiment is threatened with utter perversion. All sorts of misconceptions pervade the public thought, and jealousies, rapidly taking on the complexion of class hatred, are found in every corner of the land. A new meaning has been given to national prosperity. With a hardihood that savors of insolence, an old pretext, which has preceded the doom of ancient experiments in popular vote, is daily and hourly dinned in our ears. ”

“ And it would be equally absurd to say, because men who have been accustomed to oppress care little for popularity, that men will therefore necessarily prefer the pleasures of oppression to those of popularity. ”

“ Public opinion floats over the surface of the peoples, wavering and submissive to the wind; it lends but fleeting conscience and conviction to the majority; it cries "Down with the reformers!" It cries "Sacrilege!" ”

“ In public life, why is abstention from the franchise attributed to the moderate party, to those whom one calls or who call themselves “respectable” people?—as if there were such a thing as negative respectability! ”

“ I do not, of course, think this at all derogatory to him, but you observe that it is hard for a man to despise popularity and at the same time have enough of it to be elected to office in a democracy. ”

“ The ambition to become great in public opinion or to gain the applause or approval of the masses, is a childish sentiment. The most faithful and noblest reformers of to-day as well as of all former generations are those who have lost their ‘reputation' by advocating unpopular principles. ”

“ No wonder the humbler class looks on the whole scene with alarm. They see their dearest right in peril. When the easy class conspires to steal, what wonder the humbler class draws together to defend itself? True, universal suffrage is a terrible power ”

“ But, if new and startling opinions are thrown in the face of the community—if they are uttered in triumph or in insult—in contempt of public opinion, or in derision of cherished errors, they lose the comeliness of truth in the rancour of their propagation ”

“ The statement of what recent times have produced for effecting an alteration among the people, must include the prodigious excitement in the political world. It were absurd, it is true, to name this in the simple character of a cause, when we speak of the rousing of the popular mind from a long stagnation ”

“ A certain amount of popularity is needed to cinch any man in politics. You're going to be the most unpopular man in this state if you start in to fight every town and city simply for the purpose of piling up costs and clubbing them away from their own as long as you have the muscle to do it.”
“I don't care about politics—politics has gone to the devil in this state already. ”

“ Both in my opinion are unjustifiable and evil, but the backing of such an organization was specially foolish in the case of the majority, whose main object ought to be to allure the minority into the same political fold. The baser elements in society, the intriguers, the job seekers, and all who would acquire by influence what they cannot attain by merit, flock into such bodies, and create a sinister impression as to their objects and deliberations. ”

“ That party and passion, and prepossession, are clamorous and tumultuous things, and so much the more clamorous and tumultuous by how much the more erroneous: that they domineer and tyrannise over the imaginations of persons who want judgment, and sometimes too of those who have it, and, like a fierce and outrageous torrent, bear down all opposition before them. ”

“ It would be vain to deny the gravity of this danger or the extent to which, in the best of democracies, the seekers after all kinds of distinction have been hypnotized by an express desire for popularity. ”

“ We look upon your language as simply intended to convey an admission that your system is unpopular; one that, from its cold, and cheerless, and unimpassioned character, would seek in vain to enlist on its behalf any measure of popular sympathy, or conciliate any favour unless from those whom it had imbued with its own proud spirit, and accustomed to the low temperature of its own frigid zone. ”

“ Again, jealous of one another, as these heads of clustered groups are likely in such circumstances to be, they are prompted severally to strengthen themselves, and to this end, competing for popularity, are tempted to relax the restraints over their inferiors and to give protection to inferiors ill-used by other heads. Still more are their powers undermined when the assemblage comes to include many aliens. As before implied, this, above all causes, favors the growth of popular power. ”

“ You are as insolent as you are ignorant,—one of those who, in the unregenerate brutality of their coarse nature, repel the attempts of all who would advocate the popular cause. I have said so over and over again. ”

“ They are, in fact, a convenient medium to break the force of popular feeling, and to transmit the rays of popular indignation against the influence and power of the crown, blunted and neutralized by as many qualifications and refractions as possible. ”