The Sun.
London, England, 1870-03-21 00:00:00

THE AMERICAN PRESS.

The New York Tribune says •—" Whenever a
New Yorker begins to succumb to the ravages of
age, he maunders about the palmy days of the old
Park Theatre.' Whenever the poor old Herald
feels particularly stiff iu the joints and weak in its
faculties it reverts in a similar regretful manner to
the early days of steam navigation and those fine
times when there were no telegraphs and Tribunes
to beat it in the collection of news. Last Saturday
it congratulated its readers upon the arrival of
two steamships, so that we may say with great
truth that the commercial steam marine of
Europe is rapidly spanning the Atlantic ;' and to
this acute remark it adds that the Herald is still
indebted for news to the same grand motive agency
which sent the Sirius thundering to the Bat-
tery in former days,' while those journals which
prefer to use 'the telegraph cable' are only slightly
ahead.' This in a certain sense is very true. The
Herald does trust to the same agencies which it
found sufficient twenty years ago ; and in the life
of such a very old, not to say decrepit, concern, a
little matter of ten days' difference between elec-
tricity and steam is certainly slight; but the 7 ribune
is still young and hearty enough to remember that
people like their news fresh. If the Herald, how-
ever, is slightly behind' in point of time it makes
up for tho delay by the quality of the article. Our
special writer in Rome,' it assured us on Saturday,
reverberates the thunder of the Vatican.' What
awful being the Herald has secured for this most
responsible duty the world will naturally be anxi-
ous to know. It is not one of the Cardinals, for
in the same paragraph we are told that a vast
difference is to be found between 'the Herald and
the scarlet hat;' and the statement is certainly
undeniable. Can it be the Pope himself ? It is
not impossible. The Pope is poor; and though
the Herald does not pay more than $5 a column,
even $5 is a good deal of money to an Italian.
Besides, who but the Pope can wield the thunder-
bolts of the Vatican ? Is it not evidently the He-
rald's intention to say that our special writer
in Rome is ho who reverberates the thunder of
the Vatican ? ' If put in this way, the phrase
is still ungrammatical, to be sure, but it is more
intelligible than it is the other way. On the other
hand, a Gifted Being who writes editorials for the
Herald made a statement yesterday, on authority of
this Roman writer, which shakes our confidence in
the otherwise plausible hypothesis. Ile tells us
that the Papal anathema or anathema: of the Syl-
labus is reported.' Now, we don't believe the
Pope would have s ►id that. He knows too much to
make anathema' a Latin noun of the first declen-
sion ; and though he has undoubtedly read the
Herald's editorials on progress, we can hardly be-
lieve that he is yet prepared to anathematize his
own Syllabus. Upon the whole, we must leave the
problem unsolved. It is the question of the day
henceforth. Does the Pope write for the Herald ?"

INTEMPERATE INTERVI ENVISG.
(From the Citizen and Round Table.)
That the intemperate practice of the best of yin
tues turn them into particularly unpleasant vices,
is universally conceded. The excessive zal of the
opponents of drunkenness frequently renders them
the advocates of tyrannical sThemes to force the
public into an intemperate use of water. An undue
admiration of the advantages of matrimony leads
the citizens of Chicago into a lamentable intempe-
rance in the variety and number of their weddings.
To speak of the the intemperate voting of our pro-
fessional repeai,ers, or the intemperance in every-
thing which characterises our Radical politicic.ns,
would be to dwell upon themes of which we are
already heartily tired. But the zeal of the " inter-
viewing " reporter daily furnishes us with fresh
instances of the evils of intemperance in well-doing,
an I perpetually provokes us to admiration of his
hardihood and amazement at his infinite impudence.
One of the finest instances of " interviewing " im-
pertinence which we have yet noticed was furnished
by the reporter of a morning paper who visited
the victim of a recent argument with pistols,
while he was lying, as was supposed, at the
point of death. To this unhappy man with the
bullet in his head appeared the reporter armed
with note-book and pencil. lie asked him the usual
questions as to the shooting affray—who was his
assassin, and what was the motive of the attack.
He inquired as to his condition and the amount of
pain caused by his wound ; and that, after demand-
ing to know the size of his family, he wound up his
inquisition by asking him if he had made a will.
The miserable man, unable to defend himself, was
forced to answer the flood of questions thus poured
upon him and would doubtless have given to the
rapacious reporter an abstract of the provisions of
his will, had not the interview suddenly terminated.
What was the cause of the sudden check received
by the reporter while in the full tide of success, we
are not informed ; but we strongly suspect that
when he touched upon the subject of the will some
humane policeman kindly interfered and relieved
the wounded sufferer from further trouble. From
the bedside of the victim the reporter hastened to
the cell of the supposed assassin, and plied him
innumerable questions with the view of entrap-
ping him into some unintentional admission of his
guilt. Here, however, he failed, for the prisoner
wisely took refuge in a general denial of all know-
ledge of the affair, and the reporter retired
without having succeeded in his purpose. Now,
here was a case in which a man, presumed to
be dying, and certainly suffering from acute physi-
cal pain, was tormented by the puerile and imper-
tinent questions of an eager reporter, who cared
for nothing but to furnish a longer report than any
of his rivals. Here was also a man under arrest,
and charged with one of the gravest crimes, who
was subjected to a cross-examination designed to
draw from him admissions which would have been
used against him at his trial. In the former ease
the reporter was merely impertinent and unfeeling;
in the latter he was interfering with the course of
justice in a way that reflects great discredit upon
the police captain who permitted his prisoner to be
subjected to such an outrage. In both cases the
zeal of the reporter, though a quality to be com-
mended in the abstract, was carried to a vicious
excess. Delicacy is not to be looked for in a re-
porter, and persistent inquisitiveness is a part of
his duty. There must, however, be a limit some-
where to the lawfulness of reportorial questions, and
we submit that to ask dying men about their wills,
and to entrap prisoners into self-implicating admis-
sions, are not among the proper duties of even the
most zealous and enterprising of "interviewing"
reporters.