I sought earlier to show that this maximization can only take place when the substance of law is continuously woven from the fabric of a wide consent. Here I propose to inquire into certain essential conditions which determine whether that consent can be obtained. I propose to inquire, in other words, into that weird complex of prejudice, judgment, interest, which we call public opinion and to seek the terms of its adequate relationship to liberty. For if my argument be valid that a man’s citizenship is the contribution of his instructed judgment to the public good, and that right action, for him, is action upon the basis of that judgment, clearly, the factor of instruction is of decisive importance. Instructed judgment is considered and not impulsive, ultimate and not immediate. It is a conclusion arrived at after an attempt to penetrate behind the superficial appearance to what is truth-seeming. It is a decision made after evidence has been collected and weighed, distortion allowed for, prejudice discounted. If, for instance, I am to oppose the State in a matter like military service, I ought not to do so until I have rigorously examined the facts upon which I build my principles. And, _mutatis mutandis_, that is true of every aspect of social activity. The first urgency is assurance that the facts upon which I base my action are valid. Now the world of facts which impinge upon each of us is difficult and complex and enormous. None of us can know all of that world. A large part of it, it may be in some context a fundamental part, we have to take on trust from other persons. Obviously, it is of primary importance that the things we take on trust should correspond with the reality on which alone a right judgment can be made. My view of the proper peace-terms that should be made with Germany will be one thing if I believe that Germans, when at leisure, crucify innocent Belgian citizens, rape their women, and cut off the breasts of their young girls; and quite another thing if I believe that the Germans are rather like other people, decent, kindly, respectable, wanting much the same things in life as I do myself. My attitude to the nationalization of the mines will obviously profoundly depend upon, first, the facts in the mining industry itself, and, second, the facts about the operation of nationalization in other fields. I cannot, in the vast majority of the problems I have to decide, make my own inquiries into the facts. Somewhere, sometime, I have to halt and say, “This man’s report, or this paper’s account, is a thing I can trust.”