ke frequent use of speeches addressed to
public meetings; and meetings to which such appeals were addressed
soon began to use their authority to demand pledges from the
speakers.[75] Representation was to be understood more and more as
delegation. Meanwhile the effect of public meetings was enormously
increased when a general organisation was introduced. The great
precedent was the Catholic Association, founded in 1823 by O'Connell
and Sheil. The peculiar circumstances of the Irish people and their
priests gave a ready-made machinery for the agitation which triumphed
in 1829. The Political Union founded by Attwood at Birmingham in the
same year adopted the method, and led to the triumph of 1832.
Political combination henceforth took a different shape, and in the
ordinary phrase, 'public opinion' became definitely the ultimate and
supreme authority. This enormous change and the corresponding
development of the power of the press, which affected to mould and, at
any rate, expressed public opinion, entirely fell in with Utilitarian
principles. Their part in bringing about the change was of no special
importance except in so far as they more or less inspired the popular
orators. They were, however, ready to take advantage of it. They had
the _Westminster Review_ to take a place beside the _Edinburgh_ and
_Quarterly Reviews_, which had raised periodical writing to a far
higher position than it had ever occupied, and to which leading
politicians and leading authors on both sides had become regular
contributors. The old contempt for journalism was rapidly vanishing.
In 1825 Canning expresses his regret for having given some information
to a paper of which an ill use had been made. He had previously
abstained from all communication with 'these gentry,' and was now
resolved to have done with _hoc genus omne_ for good and all.[76] In
1839 we find his former colleague, Lord Lyndhurst, seeking an alliance
with Barnes, the editor of the _Times_, as eagerly as though Barnes
had been the head of a parliamentary party.[77]

The newspapers had probably done more than the schools to spread
habits of reading through the country. Yet the strong interest which
was growing up in educational matters was characteristic. Brougham's
phrase, 'the schoolmaster is abroad' (29th January 1821), became a
popular proverb, and rejoiced the worthy Bentham.[78] I have already
described the share taken by the Utilitarians in the great Bell and
Lancaster c