The Press.
London, England, 1858-04-03 00:00:00

THE PRESS, APRIL 3, 1858.

tions of a personal kind that require prompt and decisive adjudication,
and for dealing with such questions Lord STANLEY is remarkably
qualified by the natural tendencies of his mind. Such questions
cannot be solved by echoing the language of " parties," or by enun-
ciating precedents. Their solution depends mostly on economical
principles; and a mind accustomed to form conclusions by estimates
of pos►tive consequences is the best for arranging the great mass of
subjects that demand the attention of a Colonial Minister.

Tho recent lamentable fire in Bloomsbury has naturally provoked
much sympathy and much indignant comment from the public press.
It is indeed a terrible calamity, and one that may well blind our eyes
to the obstinate facts which underlie it. The facts are disagreeable,
inconvenient, unpalatable, to all those classes who consider a bank-
note a legitimate substitute for all other species of charity. But as
long as the poor are driven back before the advance of improvement,
and crowded into these miserable lath-and-plaster tenements,
so long may we be sure that nothing but an accident is wanting to
insure a similar catastrophe. In this case, whatever may have been
the cause of the fire, there can be little doubt of what caused the
almost unparalleled loss of life. The shoring up of the house inter-
cepted the lodgment of the fire•escapes, and it is quite clear that a cer-
tain number of lives were sacrificed in consequence, though per-
haps not all. Yet no one is to blame for the shoring up. In fact,
to have neglected the precaution in the existing state of the buildings
would have been highly culpable. Again, as to the want of trap-
doors, back-windows, and other modes of exit, or communication, we
can only say that if Londoners are never to be secure till these things
are established all over the vast area of houses which constitutes
London and its suburbs, it is a very dismal prospect. Nor, on the
other hand, does it seem so imperatively necessary as it has been
represented to be. How seldom do we hear of any fire in a housa
inhabited by a single family, or even in the better class of lodging-
houses. Shops are liable to dangers of their own. But in dwelling-
houses the real danger arises from the over-crowding of the inmates,
and the reckless habits thereby engendered. Till this class of houses
is improved, we are liable at any moment to a repetition of the Blooms-
bury catastrophe.

The conduct of a particular journal in violating the literary and
social conventions of the public press cannot be allowed to pass
without condign notice. if once the practice be tolerated of an organ
attacking the management and commenting on the private affairs of
contemporaries, we may bid a farewell to the respectability of the
English press. At present there is only one London journal which
systematically trades on the literary defamation of its rivals. That
journal, we need hardly say, is the Saturday Review, which has obtained
a disagreeable notoriety by its detraction of the chiefs of all parties,
and by its reckless aspersions of other organs addressing the English
public. That THE PRESS should be abused by a print which has
earned for itself the title of " The Spatterday Review," is a fact not to
be surprised at. As a journal closely connected with and represent-
ing the principles of the Conservative party, THE PRESS seeks no
immunity from the legitimate warfare of honourable polemics. But
the use of poisoned weapons is the practice of the assassin, and not
the custom of the open adversary. To comment with critical poignancy
on the reasoning of a political antagonist, is one thing; but to
peer with intrusive eyes into the internal arrangements of a
political organ, exhibits the meanness of a spy. Such conduct,
of course, cannot be allowed with impunity, and the Saturday
Review has egregiously miscalculated its resources, and ridiculously
exaggerated the calibre of its small artillery, if it supposes itself to be
invulnerable. That the Saturday Review is a curiosity in journalism
cannot be denied It is a sort of weekly porcupine, whose quills are
in constant insurrection against all who do not like the tainted
theology which subordinates the study of the Holy Scriptures to a
proficiency in the jargon of architectural [esthetics, and who are not
ready to pin their political faith on some Cabinet of invisible states-
men which the Saturday Review is one day to reveal. Lord 13aououam,
when exhausting his energies, and when drinking the lees of his once
great popularity, was wittily caricatured under the symbol of the
schoolboy's toy of " the man who kicks all manner of ways ;" and the
Saturday Review hopes to rise by adopting the practices through which
Lord BROUGHAM fell. A catalogue of its antipathies is a confession of
its being the "anti-English in everything" journal. It is anti-Con-
servative, anti-Whig, and anti-Radical. In one and the same impression
it has astonished its readers with the discordant sounds of a small
political menagerie. Lord DERBY, Lord PALMERSTON, Lord JOHN
RUSSELL, Lord ELLENBOROUGH, Mr. DISRAELT, have all been virulently
attacked in it, and the leaders of the popular Liberals have also been
bitterly assailed. Even some of the followers of the late Sir R. PEEL
have suffered equally from its pompous praise and its capricious
censure. In search of subjects for its vituperation, the Saturday
Revw circumnavigates the political world, a literary Captain
Cook in search of Slander Islands. Yet there is a purpose
in this apparent universality of detraction. Political and
religions Jesuitry could not Letter carry out its purposes
than by striving to make the great English public distrust its own
capacity. To weaken the confidence in public opinion is one of the
objects pursued with constancy by the Saturday Review, and its
shallow and heartless mockery of " the English public " betrays at
its
indefatigable the foreign element which inspires its sinister industry and
indefatigable detraction. Thus, it attacked the Times partly with the
double purpose of tempting a great leading organ to advertise it by. a
controversy, and at the same time to disparage the newspaper world in
general by singling out a great organ for systematic abuse.
iThenit
fell foul of Punch, who unwarily fell into the trap, and aided tt
advertising it for a time, until our facetious contemporary took ample

325

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Lord STANHOPE
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