One of the two or three streaks of light on our horizon can be perceived
in this: that the moral breakdown of these papers has been accompanied
by a mental breakdown also. The contemporary official paper, like the
“Daily News” or the “Daily Chronicle” (I mean in so far as it deals with
politics), simply cannot argue; and simply does not pretend to argue. It
considers the solution which it imagines that wealthy people want, and
it signifies the same in the usual manner; which is not by holding
up its hand, but by falling on its face. But there is no more curious
quality in its degradation than a sort of carelessness, at once of
hurry and fatigue, with which it flings down its argument--or rather its
refusal to argue. It does not even write sophistry: it writes anything.
It does not so much poison the reader’s mind as simply assume that the
reader hasn’t got one. For instance, one of these papers printed an
article on Sir Stuart Samuel, who, having broken the great Liberal
statute against corruption, will actually, perhaps, be asked to pay his
own fine--in spite of the fact that he can well afford to do so. The
article says, if I remember aright, that the decision will cause general
surprise and some indignation. That any modern Government making a very
rich capitalist obey the law will cause general surprise, may be true.
Whether it will cause general indignation rather depends on whether
our social intercourse is entirely confined to Park Lane, or any such
pigsties built of gold. But the journalist proceeds to say, his neck
rising higher and higher out of his collar, and his hair rising higher
and higher on his head, in short, his resemblance to the Dickens’
original increasing every instant, that he does not mean that the law
against corruption should be less stringent, but that the burden should
be borne by the whole community. This may mean that whenever a rich man
breaks the law, all the poor men ought to be made to pay his fine. But
I will suppose a slightly less insane meaning. I will suppose it means
that the whole power of the commonwealth should be used to prosecute an
offender of this kind. That, of course, can only mean that the matter
will be decided by that instrument which still pretends to represent
the whole power of the commonwealth. In other words, the Government will
judge the Government.
Now this is a perfectly plain piece of brute logic. We need not go into
the other delicious things in the article, as when it says that “in old
times Parliament had to be protected against Royal invasion by the man
in the street.” Parliament has to be protected now against the man
in the street. Parliament is simply the most detested and the most
detestable of all our national institutions: all that is evident enough.
What is interesting is the blank and staring fallacy of the attempted
reply.