I PROPOSE to discuss in what follows the evil of the great
modern Capitalist Press, its function in vitiating and
misinforming opinion and in putting power into ignoble
hands; its correction by the formation of small independent
organs, and the probably increasing effect of these last.
I
About two hundred years ago a number of things began to appear in
Europe which were the fruit of the Renaissance and of the Reformation
combined: Two warring twins.
These things appeared first of all in England, because England was the
only province of Europe wherein the old Latin tradition ran side by
side with the novel effects of protestantism. But for England the
great schism and heresy of the sixteenth century, already dissolving
to-day, would long ago have died. It would have been confined for
some few generations to those outer Northern parts of the Continent
which had never really digested but had only received in some
mechanical fashion the strong meat of Rome. It would have ceased with,
or shortly after, the Thirty Years War.
It was the defection of the English Crown, the immense booty rapidly
obtained by a few adventurers, like the Cecils and Russells, and a
still smaller number of old families, like the Howards, which put
England, with all its profound traditions and with all its organic
inheritance of the great European thing, upon the side of the Northern
Germanies. It was inevitable, therefore, that in England the fruits
should first appear, for here only was there deep soil.
That fruit upon which our modern observation has been most fixed was
_Capitalism_.
Capitalism proceeded from England and from the English Reformation;
but it was not fully alive until the early eighteenth century. In the
nineteenth it matured.
Another cognate fruit was what to-day we call _Finance_, that is, the
domination of the State by private Capitalists who, taking advantage
of the necessities of the State, fix an increasing mortgage upon the
State and work perpetually for fluidity, anonymity, and
irresponsibility in their arrangements. It was in England, again, that
this began and vigorously began with what I think was the first true
"National Debt"; a product contemporary in its origins with industrial
Capitalism.
Another was that curious and certainly ephemeral vagary of the human
mind which has appeared before now in human history, which is called
"Sophistry," and which consists in making up "systems" to explain the
world; in contrast with Philosophy which aims at the answering of
questions, the solution of problems and the final establishment of the
truth.
But most interesting of all just now, though but a minor fruit, is the
thing called "The Press." It also began to arise contemporaneously
with Capitalism and Finance: it has grown with them and served them.
It came to the height of its power at the same modern moment as did
they.
Let us consider what exactly it means: then we shall the better
understand what its development has been.