There was a great point in law lecturer Tom Cooney's article on this page last Friday following the quashing of the conviction of Pádraig Nally for the manslaughter of a Traveller. He was talking about juries and why they work.
Contrary to the conventional lawyerly prejudice, studies show that juries (if let alone) nearly always come to sound conclusions on the facts laid before them. "When juries differ from the judge on the outcome," he wrote, "it is usually because they are serving some of the very purposes for which the jury was created."
Opinion polls nowadays represent a kind of jury system within the political life of the nation, approximately shadowing the mood of the ultimate jury in an election. The principle outlined by Tom Cooney often applies here also, as was clear from the opinion poll published in the same edition of this newspaper last Friday.
The "judges" in the trial of Bertie Ahern on the charge of low standards in high places were unhappy with the jury's decision.
The dramatic eight-point increase in support for Fianna Fáil made no sense in the context not merely of the events of recent weeks but indeed of the jury's professed attitude to these. Two thirds of voters believed Mr Ahern was "wrong" in accepting donations from businessmen, and yet his personal rating was up. An editorial in this newspaper concluded severely that the culture of nods and winks is alive and well in Irish life. "What sort of people are we?" it demanded, answering immediately: "We know now."
There is a long history of journalistic disappointment with the moral standards of the electorate, but, as with the legal system, when there is a serious clash between "judge" and "jury", the latter is usually right.
Politics is, precisely, the will of the people, not of journalists, even political correspondents or editors. Just as the jury represents the very essence of justice - embracing compassion and common sense as much as logic and objectivity - the sole font of political morality resides in the hearts of the people.
Rather than lecturing the jury on the issue of moral probity, therefore, it behoves journalists to understand what is being said. To conclude that this poll is proof of the persistence of "nods and winks" is not merely insulting to the people - it is clearly wrong. The suggestion of an incongruity between the expressed attitude of the public and the increased ratings of the Taoiseach and his party arises not from some doublethink on the part of the poll sample, but, as often occurs, from a poorly-worded question.
There is, then, a rather startling resemblance between the poll and the trial of Pádraig Nally. The Court of Criminal Appeal found that the judge misdirected the jury in the Nally case because he withheld from it the option of acquittal. An analogous misdirection occurred in The Irish Times/TNS mrbi poll.
Participants were asked: "Do you believe that it was right or wrong for Bertie Ahern to accept €50,000 in payments from his friends while he was minister for finance in 1993?" A similar question was asked in respect of the Manchester payment. To the first, 24 per cent said Mr Ahern was "right", 64 per cent that he was "wrong". To the second question, 23 per cent said "right", 66 per cent "wrong".
It is obvious that the settled view of the electorate is that Mr Ahern was foolish to accept money but that he is not corrupt. I have written here recently that there is more to life than what journalists call "ethics" - a view that appears to be reflected in the wider public outlook.
But if I had been approached by a pollster last week and asked the above questions, I would have replied "wrong" to both. The trouble is that neither question offers me a means to express my complete sentiment.
For this, I would have required a third option, along the lines of "Do you believe that Bertie was out of his tiny mind in 1993?" or "Do you think Bertie should be shot for risking his career in this way?" The poll and its analysis, therefore, were unfair to the people.
The electorate, or an opinion poll sample, comprises members of the human race, who recognise a personal crisis when they see one. Most people apprehend the facts of Mr Ahern's situation in 1993 and relate them not to some abstract notion of "probity" but maybe to some comparable dilemma in their own experience.
The electorate loves, above all, evidence of life, and this story has followed closely the contours of reality, with its pains and imperfections, its long trials and small mercies. The people have warmed anew to Bertie because there has been something in this story that revealed him as a larger - ie more real - man than they believed. Reality comprises more than what journalists call "ethics".
Those who look to politics for black and white conditions will see only confusion. Life, in which politics is rooted, is not like that and never was. And nowadays even newspapers have occasional splashes of colour.