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Canadian Club. Winnipeg. December, 1936.

Let me define my subject. I mean public opinion which is
free to form itself, and free to assert itself. Public opinion always
rules, even under a tyranny. The worst tyranny in history could
not have existed for one day unless public opinion had at any rate
acquiesced in it. But the public opinion I want to speak of today
is that which is found in a free democracy, and which has some continuing
means of influencing the government of the country. This is indeed
the only real definition of a democracy, as President Wilson
used to declare. Democratic government does not depend upon any particular
form of constitution. We in Britain have been far too inclined
in the past, I think, arbitrarily to identify it with our special
kind of parliamentarianism. But it does depend upon the people being
able, when its mind is clear, to direct the course of government.
This was Edmund Burke's great doctrine, that the people might be foolish
in small things, but in any great question, which profoundly moved
them, they were generally right. Some of us realised last December
quite suddenly that Britain really was a democracy, when a powerful
Government with a large majority, fresh from a General Election, was
compelled by gn up-rush of popular opinion completely to alter its
foreign policy. The fact that the country came to change its views
later does not alter the significance of that incident. I suspect
that future historians will regard it as a key-point in contemporary
history.

I want to talk to you today about what makes public opinion.
There are, of course, speeches in Parliament, but except in one or
two papers the proceedings in Parliament are not very fully reported,