afford the best illustration of the social and civic development of the
civilized world. Commencing with a mere official announcement of national
events, such as the ancient Romans daily promulgated in writing, we find
the next precursor of the public journal in that systematic correspondence
of the scholars of the middle ages, whereby erudite, philosophical, or
æsthetic ideas were regularly interchanged and diffused. From this to the
written circular, distributed among the English aristocracy, the
transition was a natural result of economical and social necessity; and
the historian of the subject in Great Britain finds in the popularity of
the ballad a still further development of the same instinct and want
expressing itself among the people. As their vital interest in civic
questions enlarged, pamphlets began to be written and circulated on the
current topics of the day; then a periodical sheet was issued containing
foreign intelligence, among the earliest specimens whereof is, _The Weekly
Newes from Italy and Germanie_, which first appeared in 1622. It is a
characteristic fact that the first two special newspaper organs that were
published in England were devoted to sporting[34] and medical
intelligence. But it was reserved for the last century to expand these
germinal experiments into what we now justly consider a great civilizing
institution. When Burke[35] began to apply philosophy to politics, and
Junius to set the example of memorable anonymous writing on public
questions, and Wilkes to battle for the liberty of the press, new and
powerful intellectual and moral elements were infused into journalism; to
these, vast mechanical improvements gave new diffusion; discussion gave
birth to systems, invention to new industrial interests, social culture to
original phases and forms of popular literary taste and talent. In
England, Hazlitt's psychological criticisms, Jerrold's local wit,
Thackeray's incisive satire, the descriptive talent of scores of
travelling reporters, and the dramatic genius of such observers as Charles
Dickens, blended their versatile attractions with the vivid chronicle of
daily news and the elaborate treatise of political essayists; while in
France, from Rousseau, Grimm, and Mirabeau, to Thiers and St. Beuve, the
journal represented the sternest political and the most finished literary
ability; from the old _Journal Etranger_, devoted to scandal, to Marat's
_Ami du Peuple_, the vicissitudes and the genius of France are enrolled in
her journalism.
The French papers have the largest subscription, those of London the most
complete establishments, and in America they are far more numerous than in
other countries; over three thousand are now published, and their price is
about one-seventh that of the English. The tone of the American press is
usually less dignified and intellectual than that of France and England.
It has also the peculiarity of being maintained, in a great degree, by
advertisements; thus the commercial as well as the party element--both
dangerous to the elevation of the press--enter largely into its character
here. It has been said of penny-a-liners that they are to the newspaper
corps what Cossacks are to a regular army; and the activity of journalism
in Great Britain, and the detail of its enterprise, are signally evidenced
by such a class of writers, as well by the fact that in 1826, when Canning
sent British troops to Portugal, newspaper reporters went with the army--a
custom which in the Crimean, East India, and recent American war, has
given birth to such memorable correspondence. The shipping intelligence of
United States journals is more minute, the philosophical eloquence of
those of Paris more striking, and the details of court gossip and criminal
jurisprudence more full in those of London,--characteristics which
respectively mirror national traits and the existent state of society in
each latitude. The shareholders of the London _Times_ have occasionally
divided a net profit of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds--the
well-earned recompense for the complete arrangement and efficient exercise
of this greatest of modern instruments. It is not surprising that the most
renowned of writers have availed themselves of a medium so direct and
universal. Chateaubriand wrote in the _Journal des Débats_ against
Polignac; Malte-Brun contributed geographical articles to the same print;
Benjamin Constant's views were unfolded in the _Minerve Française_;
Lafitte's opinions found expression in the _Journal du Commerce_.
Lamartine's ideal of a journal is one which has 'assez de raison pour
convenir aux hommes sérieux, assez de témerité pour plaire aux hommes
légeres, assez d'excentricité pour plaire aux aventereux.' With all the
restrictions to which despotism in France has subjected the press, its
history as a whole is as Protean as Paris life, and reflects the
tendencies of national character. As early as 1650, there was a _Gazette
de Burlesque_, soon after a _Mercury Galant_; the _Journal des Débats_ is
devoted to facts and its own dignity, the _Siècle_ represents mercantile
interests, _La Presse_ is full of ideas, and has been well described as
partaking of the nature of a torrent which '_se grossit par la
resistance_.'[36] Napoleon depended on the _Moniteur_, and kept the press
low because he feared its influence more than an army. The proprietors of
the _Constitutionel_ often pay a hundred and fifty francs for a single
column. William Livingston wrote effectively, in 1752, in the _Independent
Reflector_, of New York, against Episcopal encroachments. Freedom of the
press, in America, was established by the trial of the printer Zenger.
Kossuth was a journalist while at the head of a nation. Cavour began his
public career in the same capacity, and Heine was the admirable
correspondent of leading German journals for many years. Centralization
vastly increases the influence of journalism in Paris, and its history
there is a perfect index of the successive revolutions. From Benjamin
Franklin to Walter Savage Landor, and from Junius to Jack Downing, these
vehicles of ideas have enshrined memorable individualities as well as
phases of general opinion. Jefferson, Hamilton, Rufus King, De Witt
Clinton, and Everett--all our statesmen--have been newspaper writers.
Specimens of recorded thought from the earliest to the present time would
aptly mark the history of civilization; the writings on stone, wax, bones,
lead, palm-leaves, bark, linen, and parchment--inscribed by patient
manual toil, denoting the era when knowledge was a mystery and its
possessor a seer; illuminated chronicles and missals representing its
cloistered years;--black-letter, the transition period when it began to
expand, although still a luxury; and the newspaper, illustrating its
modern diffusion and universality. The scribe's vocation was at once
superseded by the invention of printing, and the scholar's monopoly broken
up; hence the scarcity and value of books prior to the times of Faust and
Caxton, can scarcely be appreciated by this generation. Wonderful indeed
is the contrast to the American traveller, as he muses beside the Anapus
at Syracuse, over the papyrus vegetating in its waters,--between the
scrolls of antiquity engrossed on this material, and the twenty thousand
closely-printed sheets thrown off in an hour by one of the mammoth daily
presses of his native country. This rapidity of production, however, is
almost as oblivious in its tendency as the limited copies produced by the
pen and transmitted in manuscript. It may be said of exclusive newspaper
writers and readers, with a few memorable exceptions, that their
intellectual triumphs are 'writ in water;' and melancholy is that fate
which condemns a man of real genius to the labours of a newspaper editor;
fragmentary and fugitive, though incessant, are his labours,--usually
destructive of style, and without permanent memorials; when of a political
nature, they often enlist bitter feelings and promote a knowledge of the
world calculated to indurate as well as expand the mind. A veteran French
writer for the press describes the editor's life as always '_troublée et
militante_.' An American poet,[37] whose divine art is a safeguard against
the worst evils of journalism, in a recent history of his paper, thus
speaks of the influence of the employment upon character:--
'It is a vocation which gives an insight into men's motives, and
reveals by what influences masses of men are moved, but it shows the
dark, rather than the bright side of human nature; and one who is not
disposed to make due allowances for the peculiar circumstances in
which he is placed, is apt to be led by it into the mistake, that the
large majority of mankind are knaves. It fills the mind with a variety
of knowledge relating to the events of the day, but that knowledge is
apt to be superficial; since the necessity of attending to many
subjects prevents the journalist from thoroughly investigating any. In
this way it begets desultory habits of thought, disposing the mind to
be satisfied with mere glances at difficult questions, and to delight
in passing lightly from one thing to another. The style gains in
clearness and fluency, but is apt to become, in consequence of much
and hasty writing, loose, diffuse, and stuffed with local barbarisms
and the cant phrases of the day. Its worst effect is the strong
temptation which it sets before men to betray the cause of truth to
public opinion, and to fall in with what are supposed to be the views
held by a contemporaneous majority, which are sometimes perfectly
right and sometimes grossly wrong.'
In regard to the influence of newspapers on style, it has been noted that
since their cheap issue, colloquial simplicity has vanished. 'A single
number of a London morning paper,' observes a writer in _Blackwood_
'(which, in half a century, has expanded from the size of a dinner napkin
to that of a breakfast tablecloth, from that to a carpet, and will soon be
forced by the expansion of public business into something resembling the
mainsail of a frigate), already is equal in printed matter to a very large
octavo volume. Every old woman in the nation now reads daily a vast
miscellany, in one volume royal octavo; thus the whole artificial dialect
of books has come into play as the dialect of ordinary life. This is one
form of the evil impressed upon style by journalism; a dire monotony of
bookish idiom has stiffened all freedom of expression.'[38] As to its
effect on the _morale_, when pursued exclusively as a material interest,
one of the most acute and observant of modern French writers says:--'Le
journal, au lieu d'être un sacerdoce, est devenu un moyen pour les partis;
de moyen, il s'est fait commerce; et comme tous les commerces, il est
sans foi ni loi;' and in allusion to the French, bitterly adds, 'nous
verrons les journaux, dirigés d'abord par des hommes d'honneur, tomber
plus tard sous le gouvernement de plus médiocre, qui auront la patience et
lâcheté de gomme elastique qui manquent aux beaux genies, ou à des
epiciers qui auront de l'argent pour acheter des plumes.' Macaulay, says a
French critic, 'a conservé dans l'histoire, les habitudes qu' il avait
gagnées dans les journaux.' Journalism has proved an effective discipline
for statesmen; the late prime minister of Sardinia first dealt with public
questions in the columns of a political journal.
But whatever facility of expression and tact in the popular exposition of
political science may be acquired by the statesman or annalist, in the
practice of journalism, there is no doubt that the worst perversions of
'English undefiled' have originated in, and been confirmed by, newspapers.
On this subject, an American writer, at once philosophical, erudite, and
liberal, who has treated of the history and influence of the English
language with remarkable insight and eloquence, emphatically testifies to
the verbal corruptions and consequent moral degradation of the newspaper
press. 'The dialect of personal vituperation,' says Marsh, 'the rhetoric
of malice in all its modifications, the Billingsgate of vulgar hate, the
art of damning with faint praise, the sneer of contemptuous irony, have
been sedulously cultivated; and, combined with a certain flippancy of
expression and ready command of a tolerably extensive vocabulary, are
enough to make the fortune of any sharp, shallow, and unprincipled
journalist who is content with the fame and the pelf.'
The interest which belongs to newspapers, as arenas for discussion and
records of fact, is greatly marred by the abuses of the press. No more
humiliating exhibition of human passion can be imagined than printed
scurrility; and no meaner or more contemptible influence of skulking
treachery than anonymous libels. By what anomaly base spirits enact and
endure insult in this form, which public opinion and the faintest
self-respect compel them to resent when orally uttered, we have never been
able to explain. It is, however, a satire on the alleged freedom we enjoy
in this country, that any malicious poltroon, who has the means to
purchase types, may defame the character, and thereby injure the
prosperity, of any one towards whom he entertains a grudge, with
comparative impunity. Indeed, if a man comes before the public in any
shape, even in that of a benefactor, he is liable to gross personal
attacks from the press; here the shafts of envy, of party hatred, of
blackguardism and of detraction, find a covert whence they may be sped
with deadly aim and little or no chance of punishment. To realize at once
the moral grandeur and the degrading abuse of which the press is capable,
one should read Milton's discourse on the _Liberty of Unlicensed
Printing_, and then a history of cases under the law of libel. The choice
of weapons is allowed his enemy even by the inveterate duellist; but there
is this essential dishonour in the attacks of the practised writer--that
he adroitly uses an instrument which his antagonist often cannot wield.
Thus the laws of honourable warfare are basely set aside; and cowardice
often wins an ostensible triumph. The meanest threat we ever heard was
that of a popular author towards a spirited and generous but uneducated
farmer with whom he was in altercation, and who proposed a resort to
arms:--'I hold a pen that shall point the world's finger of scorn at you!'
The cheapest abuse is that which can be poured out in newspapers; and
besides the comparatively defenceless position of the assailed, if he have
no skill in pencraft, it is the more contemptible because premeditated;
the insulting word may be uttered in the heat of rage, but the slanderous
paragraph goes through the process of writing and printing;--it is,
therefore, the result of a deliberate act. The 'scar of wrath' left on the
heart by the partisan combats of the press is seldom honourable, and the
records of duels, persecutions, and street-fights, originating in libels,
is one of the most degrading, to all concerned, of any in social history.
Vituperation and invective, Billingsgate and the cant nicknames of
newspaper controversy, belong to the most unredeemed species of
blackguardism. No wounds rankle in the human bosom like those inflicted by
the press; and no agent of redress should be used with such thorough
observance of the golden rule. 'The French,' says Matthew Arnold, 'talk of
the "brutalité des journaux Anglais." What strikes them comes from the
necessary inherent tendencies of newspaper writing not being checked in
England by any centre of intelligent and urbane spirit, but rather
stimulated by coming in contact with a provincial spirit.'
From these various capabilities and liabilities of journalism we may infer
what are the requisites of an editor. It is obvious that his intellectual
equipment should be more versatile and complete than that demanded by any
other profession. He is to interpret the events of the day, and must, of
course, be versed in the history of the past; he is to speak a universal
language, and the gifts of expression must be his chief endowment; he
exercises a mighty influence, and, therefore, judgment, self-respect, a
recognition of rights and duties, and a benevolent impulse are essential.
The _juste milieu_ between moral courage and respect for public sentiment
should be his goal. It is a significant fact that, in this country, where
there are more readers than in any other, and, at the same time, entire
freedom of the press, journals have not attained to the intellectual
standard of the best of foreign origin, nor has the profession of an
editor reached the rank it has in Europe. With a few exceptions, the
vocation has been adopted, as school-keeping used to be, as the most
available resource. Cleverness has usually been the substitute for
acquirement; loyalty to some dogma for philosophy, and glib phrases and
cant terms for style. In some memorable cases, where the London system of
a division of labour is resorted to, and the French practice of careful
rhetoric and reasoning applied to current topics, the result has
approximated to what a leading journal should be. Such names as Franklin,
Russell, Thomas, Duane, Buckingham, Walsh, Gales, Noah, King, Hoffman, and
the eminent contemporary editors of America, bear, it must be remembered,
but a very small proportion to the sum total of newspapers published in
this country; and it is the average ability and character of editors to
which we refer. Yet familiarity alone blinds us to the 'extraordinary
talent' exhibited in the journalism of our times. 'I'll be shot,' says
Christopher North to the shepherd, 'if Junius, were he alive now, would
set the world on the rave as he did some half century ago.'
The rarest and most needful moral quality in an editor is magnanimity. Of
all vocations this is the one with which narrow motives and exclusive
points of view are most incompatible. It is true that the office is
self-imposed; but in its very nature is included a comprehensive tone of
mind and feeling; the editor, therefore, who pronounces judgment upon a
book, a work of art, a public man, or popular subject, according to his
personal animosities or selfish interests, annuls his own claim to the
position he occupies. If the pulpit, the medical chair, the justice's
bench, or the authority of elective office is exclusively used by an
individual for direct personal ends, for the exclusive emolument of
friends, or the gratification of private revenge, the perversion is
resented at once and indignantly by public opinion; and the same violation
of a general principle for a particular end is equally unjustifiable in
the press. Yet how many journals serve but as channels for the prejudices,
the likes and dislikes, the plans and whims of their editors; so that at
last we recognize them, not as broad and reliable expositors of great
questions and critical taste, but as mouthpieces for the spite, the
flattery, and the ambition of a single vain mortal! For such evils
Milton's arguments, for patient toleration of all kinds of printed ideas,
are the best remedy: 'Punishing wits,' he says, 'enhances their authority;
errors known, read, and collated, are of main service toward the speedy
attainment of what is truest; and though all the winds of doctrine were
let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do
injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength.' With
all its defects, therefore, the emanations of a free press are the best
expositors of the immediate in taste, opinion, and affairs; and copies of
_The Times_, the _Court Journal_, and _Bell's Life in London_, deposited
under the corner-stone of a modern English edifice, are as authentic
memorials of the country and people as they exist to-day, as the styles of
Grecian architecture, or the characteristics of Italian painting, of
epochs in the history of art, and far more detailed, minute, and
elaborate. The complex state of society, the multitudinous aspect of life,
the progress of science, and its influence on social economy, can indeed
only be designated by such a versatile record. The miserable little
gazzettas issued in the south of Europe, containing only the diluted news
of the French journals; the spirited _feuilletons_ of the cleverest
authors of the day that appear in the latter, the enormous advertising
sheets in this country, and the able rhetoric and argument of the daily
press in Great Britain, are so many landmarks and gauges of the civic
life, the mental recreations, the prosperity, and the political
intelligence of these different countries. Although Fanny Kemble snubbed
the press-gang, ironically so called,--perhaps in this age there is no
office capable of a higher ideal standard and a more practical efficiency
combined, as that of the public writer. Let us suppose such a man endowed
with the greatest faculty of expression, learned in history and the arts,
with philosophic insight and poetical sensibility, chivalric in tone,
uniting the principles of conservatism and reform, devoted to humanity,
generous, heroic, independent, and 'clear in his great office;' and thus
furnished and inspired, waging the battle of honest opinion, a staunch
advocate of truth, stripping the mask from fanaticism and dishonesty, and
shedding pure intellectual light on the common mind;--no more noble
function can be imagined. Seldom, however, is the ideal of an editor even
approached; and hence the wisdom of an eclectic system and a division of
labour; concentrating upon the same journal the humour of one, the
statistical researches of another, the learning of a third, and the
rhetoric of a fourth, until all the needful elements are brought into
action for a common result.
In periods of war, emigration, or catastrophes of any kind, the newspaper
becomes a chart of destiny to the heart, and is seized with overwhelming
anxiety to learn the fate of the absent and the loved; and, in times of
peace and comfort, it is the readiest pastime. What traveller does not
remember with zest the intervals of leisure he has spent, under the trees
of the Palais Royal, over a fresh gazette; or the eagerness with which, in
an Italian _café_, he has devoured _Galignani_ with his breakfast? It is
difficult to imagine how the social reforms that distinguish the age could
have been realized without the aid of newspapers; or by what other means
popular sympathy could be kindled simultaneously on both sides of the
globe. In view of such offices, we must regard the editor as a species of
modern _improvisatore_, who gathers from clubs, theatres, legislative
halls, private society, and the streets, the idea and the elemental spirit
of the hour, the topic of the day, the moral influence born of passing
events, and then concentrates and elaborates it to give forth its vital
principles and absolute significance.
As a medium of controversy, the advantages of the newspaper are signal. In
1685, the discussion of popery in England was carried on by means of
tracts issued from the presses of Oxford, Cambridge, and London; and some
of the pamphlets of Defoe, Steele, and other popular writers, had a large
sale; but the circulation of these vehicles of argument was limited
compared to the daily journals of our day; and in order to reach the
people, controversialist and agreeable essayists, from the times of 'Sir
Roger L'Estrange' to that of 'O. P. Q.,' have wisely availed themselves of
newspapers. That they now aid rather than form public opinion, however, is
quite obvious. The implicit faith once bestowed upon editors has departed;
and no class are more pertinacious in asserting the right of private
judgment than habitual readers of journals; they derive from them
materials of discussion rather than positive inferences. Yet there are two
qualities that in Great Britain and America gain an editor permanent
admirers--good sense and an individual style. The thunder, as Carlyle
calls it, of Edward Sterling in the London _Times_, and the plain words of
Cobbett, are instances. In fact, the same qualities insure consideration
for a newspaper as for an individual; tone, manliness, grace or vigour,
full and free knowledge, wit and fancy, and the sincerity or geniality of
the editor's character, are not less recognized in his paragraphs than in
his behaviour. But as a general rule, as before suggested, in the United
States, the press is the expositor, not the herald, of opinion; the
newspapers simply mark the level of popular feeling; their criticism
seldom transcends the existent taste, and their tone is rarely elevated
above that of the majority. Between the radical and the conservative there
appears no medium; and newspapers symbolize these two extremes. In our
large cities there is always one newspaper which has a name for
respectability, of which its editors are extremely jealous; it never
startles, offends, or inspires, but pursues an even, unexceptionable
course, is praised by old people who have taken it for years, and desire
that it shall contain their obituary; its news, however, is usually stale,
its opinions timid, and its spirit behind the age. To represent the
opposite element, there is always a vigorous, speculative, and fresh-toned
newspaper, which continually utters startling things, and suggests
glorious impossibilities; it is the exponent of reform, a harbinger of
better times, and appeals to hope and fancy, rather than to memory and
reflection. Now the experienced reader will at once perceive that an
editor, worthy the name, should be an eclectic, and combine in his own
mind and work the expression of both these extremes of opinion and
sentiment; but it is found, by experiment, that a hobby is the means of
temporary success,--that a catholic temper is unappreciated, and that, in
a republic, combativeness and self-esteem are the organs to be most
profitably addressed.