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Culea Mihaela University of Bacu

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY IDEOLOGY AND THE ROOTS OF PUBLIC OPINION IN ENGLAND


Motto: Whateer men do, or say, or think, or dream, Our motley paper seizes for its theme1 Abstract The paper explores the role of the English periodical press of the eighteenthcentury in aspects concerned with moral reformation, social instruction and cultural improvement in general. Analysing the impact of Richard Steeles and Joseph Addisons criticism on the society of the eighteenth-century England we can observe that the two inaugurated the emergence of public opinion but they also put forth general human rights, such as the liberty of expression. According to Jrgen Habermas2 the eighteenth-century English periodicals can account for the genesis of the bourgeois public sphere. But the dawn of public opinion also supported the formation of the eighteenth-century English ideology understood as a system of social beliefs. It seems that the ideological patterns advocated by the journalists or the writers of the eighteenth-century England foregrounded original values for the general public, such as common-sense, morality, wit, taste, or decorum. We trace the early representations of public communication, the spaces where this public engagement was performed, the aims of the periodical press, the strategies developed for the moral reformation of the community, the categories of readers, while all these aspects ultimately show the way in which writing and printing became active agents in cultural improvement even though they were considered only some middle-class professions. Key-words: public sphere; periodicals; ideology; values; social

criticism; the new capitalists


The London of 1709-1714 was perhaps best portrayed by two influential newspapers edited by Richard Steele and Joseph Addison, namely The Tatler (April 12, 1709 January 2, 1711) and The Spectator (March 1711 December 1712; also June December 1714). The press was the second element in the early capitalist commercial system. The emergence of capitalism included new commercial relationships, such as the traffic in commodities and news created by early capitalist long-distance trade. The notion of traffic in news was important because traders developed a new type of communication they needed for their business. Commercial correspondence under
1

Juvenal, Satires 1.85-86, apud Mackie, Erin (ed.), The Commerce of Everyday Life. Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator , Boston and New York, Washington University, 1998, p. 49. 2 Habermas, Jrgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, translated by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2007, pp. 15-20.

the form of news letters suited their interests and they circulated within their group; thus, these news letters represented private correspondences commercially organised by news dealers. This phenomenon occurred initially in Venice, then in Paris and in England they were called writers of letters 3. However, it was only in the seventeenth century that the regular supply of news became accessible to the wider public. The published word became extremely important and the public felt more united under the influence of the new strings secured by the regular news reports4. The origins of the English public press must also be related to the spaces where they were exploited the most: the coffee houses (in the public sphere of the town) and the salons (in the private-public sphere of the home) or the clubs. These spaces mediated and made possible the accomplishment of the objectives launched by the founders of the major periodicals of the time. Initially, the periodicals were the instruments of art criticism. Criticism arose from written discussions and debates and the writing of news letters soon developed into literary criticism. Habermas calls attention to the fact that the early journals were called Monthly Conversations or Monthly Discussions, showing once more that this kind of journalism periodically issued had its origin in convivial critical discussion 5. A special type of periodical writing was the moral weekly, with a clearly corrective and educational or enlightening character. Considering them authentic literary pieces, their founders assumed more roles concerning their relationship to the public. But, first of all, we should underline the great success of these periodical essays which were the most successful innovation of the day since they represented the mode by which the most cultivated writer could be brought into effective relation with the genuine interests of the larger audience 6. The formula of the periodical containing a set of essays as it was launched by Addison and Steele entertained an intimate dependence not only between the written material and the space for its verbal reverberation, specifically the coffee house, but also between the essayist and the reader/ debater. The public was kept close, and thousands of letters flooded the essayists office, out of which he always published a selection. Significantly, all this proves that the most important periodicals, out of which we will make special reference to The Spectator and The Tatler, strove to introduce the learned or the unlearned public into the sphere of literature and culture, avoiding excessive erudition. The strategy the essayists chose was suggestive from
3

Idem, note 32 on page 253. Another decisive stage in the early outburst of the press can be observed at the middle of the seventeenth century when the first journals appeared. They were called political journals (according to Habermas, Jrgen, The Structural, op. cit., p. 20) but they were still an amalgamation of news of different sorts. However, the private letters of merchants formed the foundation of these journals as they were selected and inserted in the printed papers. Gradually, information of different kinds was included in the newspapers and the traffic in news seemed not only a profitable business but also an obvious need of the urban society. The roots of the press also marked the beginnings of the public critical sphere. Additionally, in Great Britain the term public opinion arose in the second half of the eighteenth century. 5 Habermas, Jrgen, The Structural, op. cit., note 33 on page 259. 6 Stephen, L., English Literature and Society, no. 76, apud Habermas, Jrgen, The Structural, op. cit., note 35 on page 259.
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this perspective: by showing the societys flaws and by mirroring its defects, the periodicals aimed at correction through the realistic and instructive representation of reality. We also consider that, having in view their strong critical value in all domains, these papers grounded the intermediary space where the public confronted the authorities, thus instituting the press as the instrument of public opinion and criticism. Additionally, the same periodicals sought to amend the social practices and were then not only a medium of representation but an agent of moral public metamorphosis. Even though the two periodicals marked only the roots of public opinion7, they facilitated the manifestation of some central qualities associated to the term public opinion: liberty of expression 8, self-expression, collective participation or mutual sharing and decision-making. People feel protected, listened to and important in the state-machine when public opinion was constituted on such premises. Thus, M. Guizot traces the formulation of the rules of public opinion characterising the constitutional state based on civil rights. Reason, justice, and truth regulated actual power and the representative system does this ( 1) by discussion, which compels existing powers to seek after truth in common; ( 2) by publicity, which places these powers when occupied in this search, under the eyes of the citizens; and ( 3) by the liberty of the press, which stimulates the citizens themselves to seek after truth, and to tell it to power9. But public opinion cannot be separated from the aspects related to the formation of ideology. Habermas understands the term first of all as a manifestation of the socially necessary consciousness. The critic also draws attention to the fact that ideology started to exist only from the eighteenth century onwards as long as, by virtue of public opinion/ voice, it searched for truth. As far as its origin is concerned, this would be the identification of property owner with human being as such in the role accruing to private people as members of the public in the political public sphere of the bourgeois constitutional state, that
7

The etymology of the term public opinion (provided by Habermas, Jrgen, The Structural, op. cit., pp. 89-90) captures the various meanings of the term along the centuries. Its first meaning would be that of the Latin opinio: opinion or not fully demonstrated judgment. A second meaning is more relevant to our analysis, that of reputation or regard, what one represents in the opinion of the others. Another interpretation was added at the end of the eighteenth century according to which public opinion refers to the critical reflections of a public competent to form its own judgments. 8 It should not be understood that, at that time, the English press enjoyed absolute freedom. On the contrary, censorship (though officially prohibited in 1695) and the Stamp Tax (1712) made it difficult for the printing of books and newspapers. The Stamp Tax, also known as the tax on knowledge, was particularly unfavourable for the journalists and printers. It required that stamps should be bought and placed on all legal documents, licenses, commercial contracts, newspapers, pamphlets, and even on playing cards (http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761566912/StampAct.html#461516666). As a result of the greater expenses, the journals printed fewer copies and some papers even disappeared altogether. 9 Guizot, M., History of the Origin of Representative Government in Europe , series of lectures, translated by A. R. Scoble, 1852, apud Habermas, Jrgen, The Structural, op. cit., p. 101.

is, in the identification of the public sphere in the political realm with that in the world of letters; and also in public opinion itself, in which the interest of the class, via critical public debate, could assume the appearance of the general interest 10. If ideology is rooted in public opinion, then the two periodicals under discussion really featured essential aspects regarding the shaping of dominant ideologies which foreground new values seeking to correct or replace the existing ones. We have seen that public opinion involves the critical reflections of a public competent to form its own judgments; what these two papers intended, both through their essayists reflections and through the attitude of the public voiced in the printed letters, is exactly what this definition epitomizes. The papers sought to show, to instruct, and to correct not only by means of the specialized messenger of the world of letters, namely Joseph Addison and Richard Steele; but they also wanted to encourage people to become competent agents in the formation and improvement of the society under all its aspects. Typographically, the periodicals standard pattern was soon established: the newspaper was printed in double columns on folio half-sheets of foolscap, also containing advertisements at the end. As we can see, this structure proves not only that the editors wanted to include as much information as it was possible, but also the fact that the editors were commercially aware and thus depended on some publicity, too. In the first number of The Tatler, Steele marks out two important aspects for the marketing of the paper: the target-audience and the general objectives of the publication. Firstly, the reading public is formed of the Pleasurable and of the Busie Part of Mankind, or, in other words, the paper is intended for the perusal of Persons of all Conditions, and of each Sex 11. As for the general purpose of the newspaper, Steele comments that it is to expose the false Arts of Life, to pull off the Disguises of Cunning, Vanity, and Affectation, and to recommend a general Simplicity in our Dress, our Discourse, and our Behaviour 12. Consequently, the major aims of the paper refer to showing and guiding the public towards ethically, socially and culturally correct values. Most often, the critics are interested in exposing the vices of general human types, not particular individuals, reiterating the fact that the whole English society somehow seemed to have taken a wrong path. In the first number of The Tatler Steele explains that he invented that title for the newspaper thinking of the best entertainment that the Fair Sex has, namely that of gossiping or talking idly. In reality, both The Tatler and The Spectator were particularly devoted to the handing down of normative rules for women, even if the predominant topics were addressed to the society of men. As nowadays, this feminine pastime and habit was heavily mocked, and so did Steele, secretly wishing to reform this inoperative practice which hindered active public involvement. More specifically, in The Tatler, this private and scandal-mongering activity traditionally figured as a predominantly feminine vice is changed into an agent of reform 13.
10

Habermas, Jrgen, The Structural, op. cit., p. 88. Mackie, Erin, The Commerce, op. cit., p. 47. 12 Ibidem. 13 Shevelow, Kathryn, Women and Print Culture: The Construction of Feminity in the Early Periodical, New York, Routledge, 1990, p. 93, apud Mackie, Erin, The Commerce, op.
11

The commercially-aware editor knows that he must always keep in touch with his readers and that the audiences interests must be obeyed. Popularity is received with modesty and a sense of responsibility once the editor realizes the paper is successful. His awareness to meet the demands of the audience proves, once again, that the eighteenth century was the starting place of the postmodern concern for the client and the bond between the client and the businessman 14. Addison seems particularly involved with his audience even quantifying the papers popularity in The Spectator no. 10: It is with much Satisfaction that I hear this great City inquiring Day by Day after these my Papers, and receiving my Morning Lectures with a becoming Seriousness and Attention. My Publisher tells me, that there are already Three Thousand of them distributed every Day: so that if I allow Twenty Readers to every Paper, which I look upon as a modest Computation, I may reckon about Threescore thousand Disciples in London and Westminster () 15. Morality and wit were the major areas where the press infiltrated in order to instruct, signalling that the English society had serious deficiencies regarding both its moral standards and its mental acumen or reasoning power. The current sort of mental and moral languor was dangerous for the progress of the society which was so much sought for. The solution by means of which the English people could be driven away from vice and immorality was the richness of Culture: I shall spare no Pains to make their Instruction agreeable, and their Diversion useful. For which Reasons I shall endeavour to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality () till I have recovered them out of that desperate State of Vice and Folly into which the Age is fallen. The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture16. Who were the readers of the developing press? In order to answer this question we must firstly distinguish between two distinct strata within the larger category of the eighteenth-century English bourgeoisie. On the one hand, there was the feeble emergence of the people occupying central positions within the public sphere: jurists, doctors, pastors, officers, or teachers. On the other hand, we find the commercially involved category of people, namely the great businessmen who formed trading companies. They were the new capitalists including merchants, bankers, entrepreneurs, and manufacturers, replacing the downwardly mobile old bourgeoisie. This new class of capitalists formed the real reading public and was the real carrier of the public voice; these capitalists did not restrict their function
cit., p. 21. 14 The eighteenth-century unity writer-editor can also be supplemented by the role of a businessman insofar as his public role was perfected by that of a businessman strongly rooted in the cultural reformation of the English people. 15 Mackie, Erin, The Commerce, op. cit., p. 50. 16 Idem, p. 89.

only to carriers of commercial and financial capitalism, they actively participated in the public domain of letters. Some novels of the period mirrored the image of a culturally invalid merchant who takes over the same vices and pretensions of the decadent aristocracy. But the majority of the capitalists successfully combined the role of owner and producer of commodities with that of cultural agent. The public targeted for instruction and amusement was a fourfold audience carefully described in the same issue of The Spectator17. But before that, Addison makes it clear that there is an urgent need to popularize knowledge and make it easily available to all categories of people. The audience is all-inclusive and then new spaces of knowledge meet the new demands of the public: they must be open to everyone, they must be civic spaces, or they should allow the coexistence of knowledge with entertainment. Thus, there was a growing consciousness of the fact that the closed spaces of the library or of the school imposed all kinds of limitations: social rank, intellectual levels, behavioural, or age limitations: () I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought philosophy out of Closets and Libraries, Schools and Colleges, to dwell in clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-Tables, and in CoffeeHouses. The first category of people who was targeted for instruction was the well regulated Family which should establish regular times for the reading of popular papers as part of the daily routine and as a constituent part of the routine necessities. This type of erudition acquired by the regular study of the press should thus turn into a family value. The second group is represented by the Fraternity of Spectators, including traders, physicians, scientists, lawyers, and statesmen, who all have a common feature: they idle in the world and they contribute with nothing to its development. In fact, while defining this group, Addison employs the metaphor of the world as a theatre where humans are roughly grouped in two categories: spectators and actors in the great play of humanity. He used the same metaphor to entitle his paper, therefore suggesting that, on the one hand, the essayist himself is a spectator of the mores of the humanity and, on the other hand, that the same humanity seems to function merely as a judge of the progress of humanity where only a small number of people bring their contribution. The third class forming the audience is in fact a new type of man of letters: the Blanks of Society, the unproductive debaters who only delight in conversations upon all sorts of news and events. They are continuously gathering together Materials for thinking, waiting eagerly for the endless hours of conversation with other members of the same group. Finally, he refers to the category of female readers, for whom even greater instruction is useful, be they ordinary or elevated women whose pastimes and activities are described in a lightly ironic tone: Their more serious Occupations are Sowing and Embroidery, and their greatest Drudgery the Preparation of Jellies and Sweetmeats. This, I say, is the State of Ordinary Women; tho I know there are
17

Idem, pp. 88-91, where Mackie provides the text of the paper.

Multitudes of those of a more elevated Life and Conversation, that move in an exalted Sphere of Knowledge and Virtue, that join all the Beauties of the Mind to the Ornaments of Dress, and inspire a kind of Awe and Respect, as well as Love, into their MaleBeholders. But since he asks for a regulated and constant audience, the writer-editor also knows his limits and moral duties towards his clients. We find here the perfect image of a commercial deal where there must be a strict mutual adherence to the contractual provisions of offering and giving. The essayist promises to give up writing as soon as I grow dull, respecting the minimal conditions of a commercial bond. Additionally, the essayist ascribes specific spaces where these four categories forming his audience would perform the perusal of the papers and the debates engendered by their topics. Regulated families would entertain themselves with the press at the tea table, the spectators would haunt the coffee houses or the other public spaces of conversation, then the blanks could be engrossed in meditating and discussing with their friends in their private chambers or out in the city, while the female World would inevitably participate in the public sphere from their toilets18. Nonetheless, even the indoor spaces are now meant to overstep their limited or confined borders and bridge up with the outer public space. But their criticism which is sometimes playful but at other times bitterly satiric is mediated by a voice, that of a fictional persona. This persona is represented by Isaac Bickerstaff as the spokesman in The Tatler and by Mr. Spectator in the paper bearing the same name. Along with this strategy of using a fictional mask so as to objectify the discourse, other linguistic strategies are employed as parts of the editors formula that could best reach the desired goals, those of exposing and reforming the vices of men. For instance, the journals approach the readers by speaking in the tones of familiar conversation sometimes spiced with light irony but avoiding harsh criticism. This tactic was obviously successful for it brought forth a special connection with the reader, and a sense of complicity took shape. Another strategy meant both to authenticate the criticism in the paper and to enforce this special relationship with the reader was that of including actual and fictitious letters from the readers. Once again, the periodicals display the qualities necessary to invite the public to be an active participant in the reformation of the society: the reader is also a writer and a debater equally engaged in the discussion 19. Just as Fielding or Sterne approached the problem of readership as companionship and conversation, Addison and Steele viewed and treated the audience/ public as their partners in the critical debate. As instruments of public opinion, these newspapers could not reform by means of coercion, threats or individual exposure or humiliation. The word, their only tool, had to be soft, gentle and skilfully employed, other major stratagems from this perspective being participation (the readers as equal companions) and persuasion (the readers are advised, not humiliated or
18 19

Understood here as restroom or closet. It is only suitable to consider the columns in the newspapers as being discussions because they formed the basis and the starting point for the frequent and fervent oral debates in salons, coffee houses, clubs or every other space out in town.

bullied). The essay format was also fashionable and proved successful; to be sure, these two periodicals helped in the establishment of the essay as a form of authoritative commentary20. Another key-element that contributed to the success of the papers was the personality of Addison and Steele. Government officials but also literary figures, these newspapermen made use of their artistic skill to balance their journalistic talent so as to reach the peoples constant appreciation. The growing number of sales along the century proved that journalists were particularly busy and in fact, together with Addison and Steele, many literary figures wrote for newspapers and journals, the gallery including Fielding, Goldsmith, Johnson or Swift, not to mention Defoe who was the first professional journalist. They had to adapt their skills and styles to the type of newspaper they were writing for and they managed so artfully that they really reflected the partisanship that linked the worlds of letters or of literature and journalism21. Another major transformation can be identified at the level of literary productions marketing. Literature was no longer solely an aesthetic activity supported by aristocratic assemblies. On the contrary, the older system of literary patronage was gradually substituted by a middle-class based commercial mode of operation and financing. The writer was much closer to the reality wherefrom he selected his themes and, what is more relevant here, he was closely tied to the market where he sold his production. If England was at its best concerning production and commerce, then literature had to enter the cycle, too. As a consequence, Addison and Steele themselves have an important role regarding the emerging profession of commercial writers22. This is why, as the commercial industry developed extensively during this time, writing and printing were thought of as being middle-class professions. The audience was mainly formed of members of the professional bureaucracy and of the commercial and financial classes, including clerks, commissionaires, tradesmen, bankers, stock company directors, or insurance financiers. As we can see, the so-called middle classes formed then the majority of subscribers, even if there was also a group of aristocratic or even low-class readers. But the zealous readers were indeed the middle-class members who, in effect, were the dominant forces contributing to the social, economic and even cultural developments in England. Addison and Steele were themselves members of the middle class and they wanted to promote a kind of compromise between the system of values characterizing the high station and that displayed by the middle orders that had their flaws, too. They aimed at an audience which was, therefore, heterogeneous with regard to social class and educational status. Two of the greatest accomplishments of the periodical press were that it could mediate and even negotiate between the elite and the lower social strata, and that it could function both as a biographical sketch and as an instruction manual for the upwardly mobile middle class:

20

Black, Jeremy, Culture in Eighteenth-Century England. A Subject for Taste , London and New York, Hambledon Continuum, 2005/ 2007, p. 149. 21 Idem, p. 148. 22 Mackie, Erin, The Commerce, op. cit., p. 15.

Indeed, the periodicals often acted as agents for the transmission of genteel codes of conduct, thus aligning themselves with values explicitly associated with the upper classes. Yet they addressed readers represented as being in need of such instruction in manners. In fact, though literate and often upwardly mobile, a good segment of the intended audience for the popular periodicals, and indeed some of their editors, were and perceived themselves to be marginal to many of the practices of upper-class culture 23. The values they recommended and advocated were meant to bridge the gap between the diverse socio-cultural classes: virtue, gentility, respect, modesty, honesty, benevolence, decorum, moderation, charity, common sense or good taste. These universal values should be uniform to all people since they are basic human principles which could ensure worthiness and nobility to whomever possesses them. Moreover, the secret pact between literature and the press was evident as both of them promoted the urgency that these values be put into practice in the English society. Together, they moulded the cultural discourse of values which was so prominent at the level of literature, philosophy, and at that of the press. Most strikingly, this discourse endeavoured to negotiate the values associated to the past with those bespeaking of the future; it negotiated the vices and flaws of the elites and the coarseness or indecency of the middle classes. In reality, the novels, the periodicals, and the audience (both as readers of newspapers or novels and as debaters in coffee houses) formed a triangle showing the importance of information, education and knowledge in peoples lives. The periodicals had their origins, aims, and audience in the coffee house culture. Thus, there is a firm interdependence between the formation of public opinion by written means and their verbal enactment and manifestation through public dispute within the precincts of the coffee house. This type of incessant conversation between coffee houses and the periodicals is perhaps unique in the English history and definitely marked the construction of the eighteenth-century English ideology through the propagation of such public cultural discourses. The three forces forming the triangle produced and articulated the cultural discourse of values specific for the eighteenth-century England. The authority of this discourse is founded on the same principles bringing together the principles of nature, justice, honesty, sense, and beauty. Besides, the right to equality, an imperative of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, originates in the distant eighteenth century. The novels, the periodicals, and the coffee houses together communicated the principles later identified by Habermas as those of the bourgeois public sphere. In The Tatler no. 225 Bickerstaff comments on the rules of polite conversation but, if we generalize, we understand that what he transmits refers to the importance of equality and benevolence24 as indispensable Rules of Society:
23

Shevelow, Kathryn, Women, op. cit., pp. 2-3, apud Mackie, Erin, The Commerce, op. cit., p. 8. 24 The relation between literature and journalism is again evident in their joined effort to echo the values that should dominate the society: Fielding too insisted on the concept of benevolence, Allworthys chief quality (in TJ). Unfortunately, though the general message of the novels foregrounded the necessity of equality, it was still too early to reach such an ideal condition.

Equality is the Life of Conversation; and he is as much out who assumes to himself any Part above another, as he who considers himself below the rest of Society. Familiarity in Inferiors is Sauciness; in Superiors, Condescension; neither of which are to have Being among Companions, the very Word implying that they are to be equal. When therefore we have abstracted the Company from all Considerations of their Quality or Fortune, it will immediately appear, that to make it happy and polite, there must nothing be started which shall discover that our Thoughts run upon any such Distinctions. Hence it will arise, that Benevolence must become the Rule of Society ()25. BIBLIOGRAPHY BACKSCHEIDER, Paula R. and INGRASSIA, Catherine (eds.), A Companion to the Eighteenth-Century English Novel and Culture, Oxford, Blackwell, 2005. BLACK, Jeremy, Culture in Eighteenth-Century England. A Subject for Taste , London and New York, Hambledon Continuum, 2005/ 2007. CULEA, Mihaela and SUCIU, Andreia Irina, Public Networking: From Cofee Houses to Universities, in Transmodernity. Managing Global Communication. Proceedings of the 2nd Roass Conference, Bacu, Editura Alma Mater, 2009, pp. 389-404. FIELDING, Henry (edited by R. P. C. Mutter), The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, London, Penguin Books, 1985, abbreviated in the quotations as TJ. HABERMAS, Jrgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society , translated by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2007. MACKIE, Erin (ed.), The Commerce of Everyday Life. Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator, Boston and New York, Washington University, 1998. PRAISLER, Michaela and COLIPC, Gabriela Iuliana (eds.), Culture, Subculture, Counterculture, Proceedings of the International Conference , Galai, 2-3 November 2007, Galai, Editura Europlus, 2008. VAN HORN MELTON, James, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe , Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2001. WILLEY, Basil, The Eighteenth Century Background. Studies in the Idea of Nature in the Thought of the Period, London and New York, Ark Paperbacks, 1986. WILSON, Peter H. (ed.), A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Europe , Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2008.

25

Mackie, Erin, The Commerce, op. cit., p. 343.

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