Arbiters

 A footnote late in the chapter "My Station and Its Duties" of F.H. Bradley's Ethical Studies runs

It is worth while in this connexion to refer to the custom some persons have (and find useful) of calling before the mind, when in doubt, a known person of high character and quick judgment, and thinking what they would have done. This no doubt both delivers the mind from private considerations and also is to act in the spirit of the other person (so far as we know it), i. e. from the general basis of his acts (certainly not the mere memory of his particular acts, or such memory plus inference.

 The footnote attaches to a sentence beginning "Precept is good, but example is better".

 The note reminded me of one in Sydney Smith's "Letters to Archdeacon Singleton", a work more playfully written but serious even so:

Mr. Fox very often used to say, "I wonder what Lord B. will think of this!" Lord B. happened to be a very stupid person, and the curiosity of Mr. Fox's friends was naturally excited to know why he attached such importance to the opinion of such an ordinary common-place person. "His opinion," said Mr. Fox, "is of much more importance than you are aware. He is an exact representative of all common-pace English prejudices, and what Lord B. thinks of any measure, the great majority of of English people will think of it." It would be a good thing if every Cabinet of philosophers had a Lord B. among them.

This is attached to a passage likewise explicit:

I am astonished that these Ministers neglect the common precaution of a foolometer, with which no public man should be unprovided: I mean, the acquaintance and society of three or four regular British fools as a test of public opinion. Every Cabinet minister should judge of all his measures by his foolometer, as a navigator crowds or shortens sail by the barometer in his cabin. I have a very valuable instrument of that kind myself, which I have used for many years; and I would be bound to predict, with the utmost nicety, the precise effect which any measure would produce on public opinion.

 Would or did Bradley think of Smith's application of "example is better" as frivolous? Smith wrote about 40 years before Bradley.