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"He Lived by the Ethics of the Fourth Estate"
The Fourth Estate
Toward the end of the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke, theorist of the English constitution, rose in Parliament to talk about a new player in democracy – a fourth estate. Thomas Carlyle reported Burke's comments:
"Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but in the Reporter' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact – very momentous to us in these times. Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy; invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable ... Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in lawmaking, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures: the requisite thing is that he have a tongue which others will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite. The nation is governed by all that has tongue in the nation. Democracy is virtually there."
From Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History, 141.
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