The Express.
London, England, 1851-03-07 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, FRIDAY EVENING, MARCH 7. 1851.

Now, first of all, we do not think this attainable,
and, secondly, we do not think it desirable. The
essential quality of a newspaper is to ho a trust-
worthy -meted of events and facts. To procure them,
test them, and put them into lucid order, requires
large expenditure, so large that the idea of the legis-
' lature to keep up their respectability by increasing
the cost is amongst the greatest of absur-
dities. To procure reports of debates in parliament
requires many thousand pounds a year ; trust-
worthy foreign intelligence requires equally large
sums. To furnish faithful reports of what
passes in the law couple and in the world is
equally costly. Now a newspaper at a penny can
incur none of these expenses. It might go on for a
time on the plan of stealing from others; but that
must end either in the prevention of the contraband,
or the rain and stopping of the great supply
of intelligence. If the American press be
adduced as an example, see what it does
for the American public. First of all, it
contains no report of the debates in Congress!
A strong speech or an occasional row is all that the
public learn of proceedings in the great federal
council. The debates in the state legislatures are not
much more fully given. Of the law courts merely the
salient and the scandalous trials are published. We
ourselves are obliged to peruse column after column
of the American press, and we can safely say that no
idea at all, much less a correct idea, can be formed
from that press, of what is really passing or thinking
in the country. To be satisfied on this point, one
has but to address any intelligent American.
We should therefore very much deprecate the pro-
curing of any such prints as the American for the in-
struction of the people of this country. And as little
should we hail with pleasure the creation of organs
for different classes of society. The worst of the
penny press, the only degrading portion of it, was
that of which the writers were conscious, that their
lucubration never fell under an educated and cri-
tical eye. That cheap press was from the first re-
deemed by honourable exceptions ; but the great pe-
culiarity of those exceptions, as well as of the
more recent periodicals established at low and po-
pular prices, is precisely that they arc addressed
to all grades of society from the highest to the lowest.
They are as welcome to, and as fitted for, the peer's
drawing-room as the cottager's kitchen. And they
there act not only as instructors, but as links, be-
tween different classes. We must confess we should
like to see newspapers play the same part. Far from
desiring to see the cobbler devour his Communist sheet
as in France, whilst the shopkeeper reads the o,n-
-steintionnel, and the idle gentleman picks his teeth
over the Debats, we should consider such a chasm
between the pursuits and ideas of high and low,
one of the worst signs which the times could show.
With us the gulph between them is too great
already; to make it greater would imperil the
whole machinery of society.
Mr. COBDEN seems to say, that none of the daily
papers take a tone sufficiently popular to please him,
and that the weekly were more to his taste. But
in truth, we know of no weekly paper that differs
widely, from the daily press, except one or two,
which take very peculiar views with regard to reli-
gion, and which enjoy their sale from their general
' ability, and not so much, we verily believe, in conse-
quence of the singularity of their religious views, but
in despite of them.
The cheapening of the press, with the rendering
it more easy of success as a commercial speculation,
should not be argued upon party grounds, or pressed
upon government or parliament because it might be
supposed to further political views or changes. The
thing is, first of all, a right ; secondly, all parties,
aristocratic as well as democratic, ought to trust to
the power of truth inherent in their doctrines, and
scorn to seek an ally in ignorance and in the obstruc-
tion of knowledge. Let there be free trade in
books and journals and advertisements; that is the
great principle. For our part, we by no means
think that either radicals, or even liberals, will be the
only artics to profit by it.