DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

Cs") show you, as clearly as lies in my power, how deficient in the sense of political, public, and social morality were past periods of great civilisation and refinement, as well as the most conspicuous and illustrious persons of those days. This will lead up to the direct, though somewhat intricate, causes which not only developed public opinion, but guided it into the healthy channels which it now follows. I am well aware that the statement that public opinion is a modern factor will meet with some question. Manifestations of popular feeling occurred in the early years of our history, contributed towards the progress of civilisation, and foreshadowed the dawn of public opinion. The Great Charter, which in 1215 the Barons obtained from King John, was, perhaps, the first manifestation of that kind. By that act the national craving for freedom asserted itself for the first time. The peasant revolt in 1881, under the leadership of John Ball and Wat Tyler, was a more general explosion of a similar nature. It was an outcry against the intolerable hardships of serfdom to which the working and agricultural classes were subjected, and was the first indication of the claims of the people for consideration and liberty. In John Ball’s famous lines : ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman P’