The capacity to judge : public opinion and deliberative democracy in Upper Canada, 1791-1854 / Jeffrey L. McNairn.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"The Capacity to Judge asks what made widespread public debate about common issues possible; why it came to be seen as desirable, even essential; and how it was integrated into Upper Canada's constitutional and social self-image. Drawing on an international body of literature indebted to Jurgen Habermas as well as extensive research in period newspapers, Jeffrey L. McNairn argues that voluntary associations and the press created a reading public capable of reasoning on matters of state, and that the dynamics of political conflict invested that public with final authority. He traces how contemporaries grappled with the consequences as they scrutinized parliamentary, republican, and radical options for institutionalizing public opinion. The Capacity to Judge concludes with a case study of deliberative democracy in action that serves as a sustained defence of the type of intellectual history the book as a whole exemplifies."--Jacket.

Part 1 Creating a Public -- 1 'The very image and transcript': Transplanting the Ancient Constitution 23 -- 2 Experiments in Democratic Sociability: The Political Significance of Voluntary Associations 63 -- 3 'The most powerful engine of the human mind': The Press and Its Readers 116 -- 4 'A united public opinion that must be obeyed': The Politics of Public Opinion 176 -- Part 2 Debating the Alternatives -- 5 'We are become in every thing but name, a Republic': The Metcalfe Crisis and the Demise of Mixed Monarchy 237 -- 6 Publius of the North: Tory Republicanism and the American Constitution 272 -- 7 Mistaking 'the shadow for the substance': Laying the Foundations of Parliamentary Government 304 -- 8 'Its success ... must depend on the force of public opinion': Primogeniture and the Necessity of Debate 360.

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