The Pioneer Of Modern Public Opinion

The Letters of Junius consisting of many pieces of single public letter,is written by an English writer whose pseudonym is Junius from January1769to January1772. Because of both its true and reliable contents and its pithy and ironic style, The Letters was praised as ’the forerunner of important political writings’ and ’the model of modern public opinion’. The Letters had great influence on English social life of that time. Except that, The Letters of Junius (book)was translated into many kinds of languages,so it has significant impact on political democratization of modern Britain and Europe.The effects of The Letters can be summarized as follows:it supervised the political behaviors of British government and political elites of that time;it expanded the right to know of the British public,the public learned knowledge of politics from it and were encouraged to be engaged in nation affairs.by that way,it expanded the political scope of Britain; The Letters also had infused a new energy into the British press,and had positive effects on the liberty of speech and publishing of Britain.Furthermore,the emergence of The Letters is an important milestone on British people’s way of fighting for discourse power,it reflected their claim of expressing opinion and bearing parts in national politics. The emergence of The Letters also makes us believe that the discourse power of18th-century Britain was starting to be dispersed and moved down,it was expanded from the nobility to the public with critical eyes. These people with critical eyes used their opinion as weapon to force the rulers to comply with reason and law.So we can say that The Letters ofJunius reflected an important fact that British public started to share the discourse power veritably, it was a new driving force to British political democracy.