The Sun.
London, England, 1864-12-23 00:00:00

Journalism in Australia.

A very cleverly conducted sixpenny weekly
newspaper has recently made its first appearance
at our antipodes. It is called magnificently in one
word, but that one word an almost sexquipedaliin
one—" The Australasian," It is a paper of gigantic
dimensions. It is crammed full of information.
I• is admirably well arranged—thoroughly readable
—often very exhilaratingly vivacious. Among other
things it contains within it, as the filet of its literary
criticisms, the most searching and comprehensive
review we have anywhere met with upon Mr.
ifinting's world.famous pamphlet, and in like
manner, of coarse, upon the whole ingenious system
now known " the wide world o'er" as the system of
Bantingism. As affording our Australasian con-
temporary an opportunity o giving his compatriots
here in England about the best possibLe
taste of his quAlity that could very well bt,
selected from the fist number published on the
first d,y of last October, we transter to our columns
the preliminary leading article 01 The Australasian,
in which article the editor of the Australasian
thus introduces himself aad his journal to public
consideration :

A journal now-a-days proposing to add itself to the
existing crowd of Victorian newspapers is in much the
same position as the latest new-corner at a ball. If he can
slip into the throng and mix in she press unobserved he will
find himself serenely installed as a freeman of the room, and
can look round with the composure of a first arrival ; if not,
he must be content to be considerably stared at, and be
elaborately on his good behaviour. Atter advertising our
arrival so long, we can hardly hope to escape the stare, and
must perforce make our propitiatory bow. Just so in the
days of Elizabeth and Shakspere, when people if they
thought much read little, and a fresh book was a month's
wonder, each new-born babe of print was ushered into the
world with an address to " the courteous reader," soliciting
his good graces and deprecating his censure, We like the
fashion, stiff as it may seem, and think an Australian
`public fully as worthy to be saluted as " courteous readers,"
and considerably more likely to deserve the term than our
ancestors in the ruffs, doublets, and trunk-hose. The
world, whatever some crusty folks may say, has been
growing better every year, and the newspapers improving
with it. If the journalist in this goodly race has largely
aided to help society on its way, society in its turn has
much more largely helped the journalist. In nothing has
the marked advance in English life during the last twenty
years been more decided than in the character of the news-
paper press. A writer in the year 1864 pro-supposes in his
readers a degree of intelligence and knowledge which
would have been anomalous in the days of the Reform
Bill, and the fact of their possessing in fact this higher
grade keeps him, on his part, from sinking below the high
level of the popular standard. In the days when Whig
and Tory formed the two opposite camps in which the
active thought of the nation was limited to serve, the
serious discussion of the great social and political questions
was reserved to the quarterly leaders of opinion; the
monthlies, at most, touched here and there upon
some salient topic of the hour, while the columns
of the dailies, from the Thunderer downwards,
were mainly filled with rabid personal onslaughts,
in which the combatants contended in the language and
with the rancour of Fusbos and Bombastes. We have
changed all this, and 'hank Heaven for the change. The
present metropolitan journals of the plebeian class are purer
if not cleverer, than were those of the middle and many of
the higher grades a quarter of a century ago. The column
of the numberless daily organs habitually contain speciali-
ties of the great quarterlies, The coarse abuse and violent
suggestions which once fatally evinced the degraded tastes
of the populace, and the bitter class hostility of the poor to
the rich, have almost entirely passed away. Though
neither wise nor interesting, the writing contained in such
periodicals as the Family Herald and London Journal is
harmless as arrowroot. The fibs of the writers
are at least of the very whitest of white lies.
The numberles Jennies, Julies, and Merles who are con-
stantly proposing, through their ever-open columns, to
correspond with some nice young man with a view to matri-
mony, probably exist only in the imagination of the editor,
nor is it likely that the niece of an earl with £3,000 a year
cannot pick up a parti in May Fair, but must apply for
him to the Penny dhoreditch Examiner; but these absurdi
ties are at any rate better than the old advices to the people
to spend their shillings in pikes and daggers against the
police, and assurances that Robespierre was the true regene-
' rator of mankind. The respectable working man of to-day,
who reads Macaulay and listens at a sixpenny concert to
Mozart, is not disposed, like his father, to believe that every
gentleman is of necessity a tyrant, and every lady of quality
no better than sue should be. The same change is equally
evident in the tone of newspaper controversies everywhere.
Messrs Potts, of the Eatanswill Gazette, and Stark, of the
-Independent, were true pictures of existing realities at the
time when Dickens launched into lite the immortal
"Pickwick"—they would now bo the grossest caricatures.
The general improvement has not been confined to
the mother country, Resident, as fully three-fourths of at
least the Victorians have been, within the last 10 years, in
the island kingdoms, the colonists may, upon the whole,
congratulate themselves that, if the press here and there
partially falls short of the standard at home, it is at any rate
many hundred degrees above the American. We have very
few Australian imitations of Mr Jefferson Brick. We are, in
our worst cases, free from anything approaching to the
unlimited shamelessness of James Gordon Bennett. If our
scanty numbers and inferior field preclude among us the
acclimatisation of a Times," the New York private stabber"
is equally a stranger. If some unlucky writer, between
dyspepsia and mosquitoes, loses his temper now and then,
and speaks of public men and things more sharply than
good taste and good feeling warrant, at least there is no
system of elaborate defamation of private life; there is no
exclusive purchase of " an atrocious act of dishonesty come
mitted by the Speaker when four years old, now communi-
cated at greas expense by his nurse." In the provincial
journals, considering the isolated character of the up-coun-
try settlements, the tendency of all monotony to exacere
bate the temper, and the necessary restriction of their con-
ductors, many of them highly educated gentlemen, to a dead
level of details, it is remarkable to find so general an ab-
sence of bitterness, and a prevalence of opinions generally
sensible and soreetim:s statesmanlike. And in truth, when
the journalist by profession, if worthy of that profession,
looks to the end and working of his enterprise, he finds in
the reflection of its action upon society enough to console
him for many personal annoyances. It is not the most
exhilarating of all things to work perpetually in the shade,
and, his own individuality buried in the anonymous, see his
best-meditated articles consigned day by day to inevitable
oblivion. But if the medium perishes, the effect remains.
A bad press is a national curse, but a good one a mighty
blessing. Though a single organ of opinion may not do
much, the collective action of the majority, especially in a
country like ours, is, after sufficient time, all but irresistible •
Even when each differs from each most widely, the
very contrariety is of use, by ventilating a question.
The discussion, open to all, keep society horn stagnating, as
the winds no the sea, and widen many a mind, by showing
its possessor that what he took for gospel truth is not so
certain after all. It is one great advantage of our own rather
special and peculiar path that, without eschewing the great
questions of the day, we shall be enabled by the pause be-
tween each successive issue to discuss them with somewhat
more of calmness and elaborateness than habitually tails to
the lot of a dahy organ, however able and high-principled.
We shall steadily bear in mind, both for ourselves and
readers, humanum est errare. It is only half-educated men
who are omniscient, and have no doubts, and for such there
will be no place among our writers. We shall put down
candidly and distinctly what we conscientiously believe true,
but be by no means either angry or surprised if our cotem-
poraries. in print or out of it, think otherwise. The quali-
ties that combine to make a successful journal are many,
but good feeling and singleness of purpose, at least as much
as talent and perseverance, are effectual allies, and if they
do not command success, may justify the hope to deserve it. ,