By the word “public,” like that of “society,” however, eighteenth-century gentlemen had usually meant “the rational part of it” and not “the ignorant vulgar”; they often meant by the “public” men like themselves whom they knew from legislative halls and private dining rooms. When they included the larger society within the “public,” they still thought of “those philosophical and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason” as its spokesmen and representatives.48
