The Press.
London, England, 1855-02-24 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

of a Parisian newspaper, and to introduce him
to all the personages whose united labours go
to the composition of one, we expected that
they would make some curious revelations.
But we have been greatly disappointed. They
tell nothing particularly new—make blun-
ders which are quite surprising in men who
are journalists themselves—and throw no
light whatever on the areana of the Parisian
press. Still there are certain points in their
little work which may be worth noticing, if
only to show the difference in the way of
getting up a Parisian and a London news-
paper.
With the modus operandi in a London news-
paper-office the reader is of course tolerably
acquainted. Here is the way in which the
newspaper-men of Paris go to work :

In the morning the editors assemble in the bureau de
redaction. The first thing with which they occupy them •
selves is the reading of other newspapers. These papers
are spread on an immense table covered with a green cloth.
They are English, German, Spanish, ltahan, Asiatic,
African, American, &c.

This is a mistake, to begin with. Newspaper
editors in Paris do not read English, German,
Spanish, or other foreign journals. Except
the Dant., there is not a single newspaper-
office in Paris, we verily believe, which pos-
sesses an editor capable of reading any living
language except his own. " Then where do
" the papers get their foreign news from?" we
shall be asked. Why, from an office in the
Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, kept by a gentle-
man named Eaves, which office makes a
business of supplying every day a certain
number of lithographic sheets, containing
translations of news and leaders from the
Spanish, Italian, German, and English news-
papers. From these sheets the editors cut
such portions as may suit them, or take facts
to work up into leading articles. They have
no other means of making themselves ac-
quainted with foreign questions, and hence it
is that Parisian newspapers generally are, in
their foreign departments, scandalously in-
ferior to those of England and Germany.

The editors, after reading their newspapers, indulge in
the pleasures of the forniente. Some repose at full length
on the sofa ; others lounge in easy-chairs ; others make
jokes; others chatter; and others, in looking over the
papers, cry out any fact which may happen to strike their
attention. All smoke cigars.

Happy fellows! At London they would have
to work—work—work!

One of them, however, armed with a pair of gigantic
scissors, cuts out paragraphs from the Paris and provincial
newspapers, and sticks them on to bits of paper. He is
called the cutler. If he cannot find matter enough, he
invents some terrible suicide, or horrible murder.

The principal editor of a newspaper is thus
described :

The redacteur en chef is generally a man of large pro-
perty. lie has a room to himself, which is more orna-
mented than that of the ordinary writers. It has even a
clock on the chimneyplece, and rats and mice do not visit
it so frequently. You see in it an infinite number of books,
pamphlets, shares in canals, railways, and bitumen com-
panies—almanacs, engravings, and lettere from the four
parts of the world. A principal editor is prodigiously
influential—he is a giant, a colossus. The beat way of
worming yourself into his good graces is to pay great atten-
tion to his wife when he gives a party. Always take care
to ask her to dance. Amongst newspaper-men she is
called La Redaction; and they say to one another, " i will
invite La Redaction to dance 1 "
The leading-article writer :
. _

He is necessarily possessed of a certain degree of gra-
vity, and is generally rather bald. It is his business to know
everything, and especially political economy. He is, no
doubt, a perfectly good fellow in private life; but at the
newspaper he is an awful humbug.

The tartinier*
After the writer of leading articles comes the tartinier
properly so called—that is, he who writes on any subject
whatever, and at any length whatever—who supplies a
certain quantity of copy. regularly, punctually, in the same
period, just as the omnibus goes from the Madeleine to
the Bastille.
The writers then describe briefly the
theatrical critic, the gentleman who supplies
news at so much a line—penny-a-liner he
would be called here—and the feuilletoniste.
But they say nothing worth quoting. Of
foreign correspondents they have not a word,
for, with one exception, the Paris papers have
no correspondents resident abroad ; nor of the
parliamentary reporter, for there is no Parlia-

• There is no word in the newspaper-slang vocabulary which
pleases UN more than this. The (artist, the reader is aware,
is a huge Flice of bread spread with Jam or butter, and is a
favorite aliment of Schad-buys. Heavy, iusipid, and indigestnhh.,
It capitally symbolises certain newspaper articles—in the Eng-
lish press, those of the Globe, for example.

180

meat in France now a days ; nor of the law
reporter, for the Paris papers content them-
selves with cutting reports of law cases
from the Gazette des Tribunans, or the Droit ;
nor of a number of other attaches who are con-
sidered indispensable in an English news-
paper-office. Except, too, a sneer at Emile do
Girardin, of the Prone, forhis egregious vanity
in allowing himself to be flattered by his own
employes in his own newspaper, the work con-
tains no direct allusion to press notabilities,
as it might and ought to have done ; neither
does it glance at the politics or influence of
the different Paris journals, or at the extraor-
dinary intrigues, political and pecuniary, which
frequently take place in connection with them ;
nor at the marvellous changes of political
conviction which their writers have undergone ;
nor at a thousand other things which were
decidedly called for, and which would have
been decidedly interesting. We could have
wished, too, to have seen the authors lash with
greater vigour than they have done that in-
credible vanity of French newspaper-folk which
causes them to announce gravely when they
leave town, and when they come back again,
when they are sick, when they dine in la grand
monde, and when their wives give them babies.
The press of no country in the world has
exercised such tremendous influence on public .
affairs as that of Paris—and none has been
so much looked up to by foreigners. Yet that
press has never in our humble opinion been
equal to the London newspapers. News is
the grand thing for a newspaper ; but never
has a Paris journal had correspondents resi-
dent in every foreign capital, and agents in
every part, and reporters flying everywhere,
as our English daily papers have always had,
and have now more than ever. In political
writing some of the Paris papers were at one
time eminently distinguished—the Difbats, the
Presse, and the National, for example; but
all the others always displayed deplorable
mediocrity—and even the three said excep-
tions never gave much proof of farseeing
political sagacity. In literary criticism thiS.
English press has always cast that of Plitis.
completely into the shade ; indeed, unfit
within the last three or four years the latter'
did not make it a regular feature in its
columns. In two things only could Paris
journalism ever claim a real superiority—
theatrical criticism and feuilletons ; and of
those two, feuilletons must be struck out of the
account, as they are not a regular and legiti-
mate department of the newspaper At the
present moment it would be positively cruel
to compare the Parisian with the English
journals. A war is raging, and they have no
correspondents to report it ; important events
are passing or preparing in every part of the
globe, and all they relate about them is con-
tained in paltry and badly-translated pilferings
from local newspapers ; European questions
of tremendous import arc on the tapis, and
they dare not say a word about them, for they
enjoy no liberty.

History of Political Literature from the Earliest
Times. By Robert Blakey. Vols. I. and 11.
Loudon : Bentley.
MR. BLAKEY has chosen a wide subject, and
we must do him the justice of saying that he
has displayed much talent and industry in its
treatment. He has brought together a con-
siderable body of information respecting tho
doctrines of political writers from "the earliest
times." He commences with the political in-
stitutions of Moses ; and, reviewing rapidly
the political literature of Greece ani Rome,
and of the Christian Fathers, he brings his
first volume to the end of the fourteenth
century. The second volume is occupied
with the political writings of the following three
hundred years, terminating with the seven-
' teenth century. Two more volumes are to
come; one continuing the work through the
eighteenth century, and the other carrying it
on to our own time.
Making every allowance for the difficulties
which the author had to contend with. we can
hardly admit that ho has chosen the best
method of making the work in " its several
" parts as popular as possible." We do not
think he has succeeded in what
.he says was
his " chief aim "—viz., the getting at " the

190

" minds of ordinary readers by the easiest and
" most direct route." Whoever may take up
these volumes will, we are afraid, pronounce
them very heavy reading. Instructive they
may be ; useful for reference they may possibly
prove; but we cannot conceive that any
person would willingly undertake the task of
going through them from beginning to end.
Different authors have different qualities of
mind ; to one it is given to go through all the
dreary toil of mining, and to bring forth only
a diamond in the rough ; to another it is given
to polish the gem and to display it in all the
lustre and beauty it is capable of receiving
from dexterous manipulation. Mr. Blakey
has the industry of the " navvies' but we cannot
accord to him the skill of the artist.

To be sure his subject is not the most
attractive in the world ; political literature, as
it is said here, is often local and transitory,
and the circumstances which in such cases
gave it interest in one age are too slight and
evanescent to preserve a place for it in the
mind of another. But it is possible to dis-
criminate, and to dwell on those points only
which have exercised some lasting influence
on the fortunes and character of mankind.
Mr. Blakey does not seem to have settled
any principles in his mind which could render
his book generally acceptable. His first
volume is chiefly occupied with a statement of
the political institutions of the States of an-
tiquity, and such details, however accurate,
and however valuable in a certain sense, can
never fasten on the reader's attention. Our
own political institutions are nearer to us than
those of the Jews, the Egyptians, the Greeks,
or the Romans. Yet, let any one draw up a
statement of our form of government, with all
the technicalities of our representative system,
and of our parliamentary proceedings, and
though ho might produce a volume highly
creditable to his diligence, it is not to be sup
posed that his narrative would meet with
much voluntary perusal. On some occasions
Mr. Blakey is hardly true to his colours. The
political literature of Rome is worth attentive
examination, and might have supplied some
animated chapters ; but we find some of the
greatest Roman authors dismissed with such
scant notice as the following :—" CEesar and
" Tacitus are useful and interesting authors."
In his second volume Mr. Blakey somewhat
varies his plan. He becomes more precise,
and gives a catalogue of the principal Euro-
pean authors who have distinguished them
selves by their political writings. But here,
again, we have to remark that we are presented
with little else than dry bones ; the Prome-
thean touch which should animate them is
wanting. There are dead facts and living
facts. In history research should do some
thing more than collect materials ; it should
infuse into them the breath of life.
The groat mistake of Mr. Blakey, as we con-
ceive, is, that he has made his history relate
rather to things than to men. There is no
personal interest in his narrative. We miss
all the strife and excitement of those political
contests which have formed epochs in the
existence of nations, and have carried on, or
modified, or changed, their forms of govern-
ment. Political literature has had its
struggles and its triumphs; in one shape or
other it has moulded the mind and influenced
the destinies of civilised men ; it can point to
its heroes and its martyrs. But Mr. Blakey,
casting aside all the vivifying detail which
makes up the better portion of its history,
presents us only with results. We cannot
suppose him to have studied all the writers
whose works he enumerates, but whether he
has done so or not, his summary of their
labours appears equally unprofitable.
Turning from the plan to the matter of Mr.
Blakey's work, we find much with which it
affords us pleasure to coincide, and much
from which we are compelled to differ. The
following passage does justice to the hu-
manising influence of political writing in
general :
Political writers of all nations have had, on the whole, a
more direct and powerful sympathy with the people at
large, than with any particular classes or sections of them.
True, we see instances where some give their aid to the
strong against the weak—to the artful against the simple
and confiding ; but, besides these being exceptional eases,
we have this fact presented to us, that even when such
writers have taken up weapons against sound doctrine, and

THE PRESS.

constitutional freedom and progress, they have had to
make appeals to the common feelings, instincts, and no-
tions of mankind. They have had to employ the organs
of the sapiensa volgare, or the general sentiments of human
nature. They have had to touch what is of universal in.
terest, and what moves the deepest passions of the human
breast. In no language, nor in any age, do we find a single
political writer who ever felt he was in a position, with
any theory or piece of political philosophy, to set these at
defiance. Taken as an entire class, literary politicians of all
ages have been men of broad and popular sympathies ; and
have founded their theories of polity—whether for or
against change—whether of a practicable or impracticable
cast—upon the universal basis of human desires, passions,
and instincts We owe, therefore, to political
writers, as a body, our highest meed of commendation and
gratitude. They have always stood in the very first ranks
of human progress and practical freedom. Some of these
brethren, in all ages, have been tempted to lend their aid
to perpetuate ignorance and oppression, but these have
been comparatively few in number; and even their tem-
porary defection from sound principles and patriotic senti-
ments had often a powerfully direct and beneficial effect
in promoting, in the long run, the extension of real know-
ledge and information among the great family of mankind.
The limitation expressed at the commence-
ment of this passage is, however, hardly wide
enough.. Politics engage the noblest and the
vilest passion of mankind, and political litera-
ture reflects them both. The fearful evil oc-
casioned by such issues as Marat's " Ami du
Peuple " must be set against a large amount of
good done by writers of better mould.
In all that Mr. Blakey says of the advan-
tages of free Governments we cordially concur.
But liberty, like other blessings, must be
subject to some limitation ; a degree of re-
straint is necessary to its existence, and the
duty of statesmanship is to determine what
share in the business of government can be
conceded to the great body of the people with
most advantage to themselves. This is cer-
tain,—that liberty, according to the expression
of the great Roman orator—kgum idcirco
omnes servi sumus ut liberi ease possimus—can
only exist when joined with obedience to law.
But our author lays it down as a rule that a
people have a right to openly resist their
Government when " their rulers no longer
" attend to the grand object of civil govern
" ment—that of promoting the happiness of
" the great mass of the nation." But who is
to judge the conduct of Government, or deter-
mine the degree of misconduct which would jus-
tify an appeal to arms? If the right of resist-
ance be once conceded, why may not a Cuffey
and his followers allege that they find the
domination of the police intolerable, and that
they have what Mr. Blakey calls an " inalien-
" able right, •from the very constitution of
" things," to essay its overthrow. Such prin-
ciples would justify the rising of Frost and
his associates, and the cabbage-garden insur-
rection of poor Smith O'Brien. The attempt
to prescribe a rule of " the right of resistance,"
as is done here, is mere folly. When the
occasion arrives no rule will be needed, and,
until it does, all debate upon it can only be
mischievous. In the following passage it is
curious to notice the confusion in the author's
mind—a ruler and a servant, according to his
view, filling precisely the same position :
The course which it is incumbent and reasonable for a
nation to follow towards its rulers is precisely the same
which all men of sane minds follow in the ordinary con-
cerns of human life. When servants either cannot or will
not do the work for which they were engaged, we remove
them and make other arrangements ; but we never, for a
single moment, conceive we are acting violently or unjustly
in such a case.
This nonsense is not even recommended by
novelty. It is but a revival of the fallacies of
Dr. Price and the Revolution Society demo
lished by Burke in his " Reflections." A man
has authority over his servants by law, and
have not his rulers authority over him by law?
If the law may be broken in one case, why not
in another ? According to Mr. Blakey's
reasoning, his own servants would have a per
feet right to get up a kitchen emeute, and
expel him from his own doors, if they con
ceived they could rule the household more to
their own comfort without him.
In the general principle that there are two
distinct and, what may be termed, natural
parties in politics, Mr. Blakey is correct:—
Party writers and philosophers on politics may be ar-
ranged, setting aside their less prominent characteristics,
under two great divisions ; the one under the influence of
progressive change and improvement, and the other of a
stationary or conservative cast. These two orders of
writers and thinkers can be traced in the political litera-
ture of every country, though not existing under any

SATURDAY,

specific or assumed form. Their antagonistic ideas can be
distinctly recognised.
We add his definition of these parties, that
we may make a few remarks upon it:—
The progressive order or school adopts and acts upon
the maxim, that there is a principle of development in
human society, and in the intellectual constitution of man;
and that the machine of government can be so adjusted as
to derive great addi'ional power and facility in its move-
ments, by adapting itself to this innate tendency of human
nature towards improvement. It would regulate itself to
a people's advancement in knowledge, and the ever-chang-
ing habits of social life. This coalition is, in fact, in-
dispensable to the real advancement of nations. It is the
germinating power—the parent of great ideas and liberal
sentiments. The retarding or conservative policy, though
it does not absolutely deny the existence of this aptitude
to civil improvement, nevertheless treats it as a matter
not to be taken into account, when discussing the vital
interests of society. It generally sets itself, therefore,
against innovations, both speculative and practical. What-
ever is, is here right. To alter, to improve, to change, is
not its character. Yet the leading idea on which the con-
servative class of political writers act, is a great idea, and is
of vital importance to all societies ; inasmuch, as it imparts
to the judgments and habits of a nation, permanency,
fixity of purpose, and a sustaining and enduring power.
The character of these parties varies with the
times in which they flourish. Sometimes the
"progressive order" advances too fast, as in
the days of the French revolution ; sometimes
the Conservative party is too slow, as when
the necessity for all improvement is denied.
But in an age of great activity like t le present,
no merely stationary party can possibly exist.
The only question now is, what direction
change shall take, whether it shall be prac-
tical or speculative, social or organic.
Our Conservative party of the present day
would put existing institutions to their best
use, and only change them in the event of
their proved incompetency to public require-
ments. The progressive party, on the other
hand, would change them from perceiving in
them some speculative defects. The legisla-
tion of the one party would proceed on prac-
tice, of the other on theory. For example, it
is said now, on one side, let us work as use-
fully as we can with the present House of
Commons ; and by the other, let us change
the constitution of the house, that we may
work usefully.
To one or other of these parties people
incline even more perhaps from temperament
than from conviction. The restless pushing
nature which perceives no immediate opening
to gain the distinction it desires under the
existing order of things, thinks that that
order is in fault, and works for its overthrow ;
the more tranquil disposition which finds that
by steady application it can make continual
progress, would see with regret that frame-
work of government disturbed which favours
industrial efforts and affords them beneficent
protection.
It seems that, amongst us, these parties,
after having been partially blended for a time,
are now about to be distinctly separated.
Personal pretensions, indeed, can never long
keep them in a state of fusion. They have a
natural tendency to fly asunder, and the time
has arrived when rational men taking an
active interest in the welfare of their country
must ask themselves to which side they will
belong. The Conservative party has taken up
a position from which the requirements of the
age, no less than the intelligence of its chiefs,
will never allow it to recede. It is pledged to
work for the social amelioration of the people,
to correct abuses, and to forward all reforms
which can contribute to the well-being of the
people. But generally it is opposed tO organie
change. It would effect improvement to avoid
political revolution, while the other party,
.on
the contrary, would effect political revolution
as a means to improvement.
Mr. Blakey appears to consider that there
can be no danger to society from political
of
movement. "It knows nothing," he says, "
" contingency, doubt, accident, and chance.
He regards it as under the special care of a
" great Guiding Hand above," and asserts that
the " history of society is the history of pro-
" gress." But has he read of no societies
which have perished, and have been succeeded
by a long night of darkness and disorder ?
We have reason, it is true, to suppose that
there are in the societies of modern times
stronger principles of vitality than in those of
the ancient world ; but it would surely be rash
to assume that they may not be overthrown by