Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Rousseau also changed his tune, writing in 1776: ‘among the singularities which mark out the age we live in from all others, is the methodical and sustained spirit which has guided public opinions over the last twenty years’. . . . In 1782 the journalist Louis-Sébastien Mercier claimed: ‘During the past thirty years a great and significant revolution has occurred in the way we think. Today public opinion enjoys a power in Europe which is preponderant and irresistible." [Blanning: Pursuit of Glory, p. 333]