The Sun.
London, England, 1869-08-26 00:00:00

EDITORS ITV AM:MICA.

(From the Ang,S,-American Times)

The American papers continue to furnish amusing
instances of the consequsoces of an eslitse's
fication throughout the States with his paper. Mr.
Horace Greeley, having one of the greatest journals,
figures most prominently before the people, and
notwithstanding a record more free from reproach
than that of ordinary men who have dose so
much and lived till nearly sixty, yet he fiuda
many individuals ready to denounce his moral
character, to question his ability, to doubt his
judgment, condemn his manners, and deny his suc-
cess. Some judge success by a man's accumula-
tion of dollars; hence a miser who has lined the
floor beneath his bed with bsgs of gold, above
which the emaciated wretch is starving, must be
their highest ideal ; but this is not Horace Greeley's
ideal, who has achieved another sort of prsspei
and leaves something very different from heaps of
dollars to mark his career through life. But it is
not easy to see, as does a contemporary, the con-
nection between Ilorace G-reeley's accumulation
and the doctrines he holds on political economy.
A man imbued with the notion that his theories
should be acted on by his country might re-
duce himself to a state of beggary while teaching
what was true, while a man who knew nothing and
cared nothing for such laws, or the welfare of his fel-
low-citizens, might amass a fortune, perhaps by
their direct infringement. Whether Adam Smith
made money or not we do not know ; most pro-
bably he lost it, for he wrote a book in those days
few men understood. The same charge was con-
stantly brought against Cobden which the Scranton
Republican, of Pennsylvania, brings against llora.ce
Greeley, that he did not illustrate by his own in-
vestments the soundness of the judgment he endea-
vours to impose en the nation. Cobden rather lost
than made a fortune, and so must all men who un-
dertake unselfishly to work for the benefit of a
country, but the English had the good taste and feel-
'ing nationally to raise a sum sufficient for his require-
ments, so that the great Free-Trade champion was
never in want of the loaf he cheapened for his coun-
trymen. The Scranton Republican, in discussing
some coal-mining suggestions of the American
champion of Protection, hopes " the miners will not
attach too much importance to them. In a matter
of practical business a more untrustworthy coun-
sellor could scarcely be selected. Mr. Greeley
broke down every one of the numerous promising
enterprises in which his friends started him before
the Tribune was conceived, and the great business
success of the latter is due entirely to Mr. Thomas
M'Elrath, its publisher. Mr. Greeley is now 60
years old, and can hardly be said ever to have
made a cent for himself yet. For his share of the
profits of the Tribune he may thank better business
men than himself." Now, we assert that this is
the worst possible answer to the Tribune's argu-
ments, admitting it to be true, which it is not.
We believe Horace Greeley to be wrong in apply-
ing, at least to the full extent in which he would
apply them, Protection doctrines to America, but
whether Mr. Greeley gave too much for the horse
he drives, the dinner he eats, or the white hat he
wears, is no answer to the Tribune's reasoning.
Were the editor less connected with the journal, so
that the words therein were not recognized as com-
ing from the mouth of Horace Greeley, such a
line of argument could never be taken. If men
will thrust themselves, in propria persona, into
the columns they edit, and invade the precincts of
such places as Billingsgate, where some of the
fish-wives occupy editorial chairs, they are sure
to be caught by the hair of the head. So long as
the editor be not ball, there is something tangible
in that all can see and grasp, and the physical exer-
tion being easier, producing in the mind's eye of
the dweller in Billingsgate a more apparent result-,
he naturally takes it, but such a resort would not
be open if American editors did not remain ident'-
fled with their papers; they, and those associated
with them writing so constantly of thetuselves
and of each other: A paper ought to go into time
world for the people to judge 'it by their notion
of its merit. The public may be thick-headed and
not appreciate the organ or the opinions it advo-
cates; it may run counter to the then current of
feeling and very soon be swamped ; but whether
the successful one of twenty, or among the nineteen
failures, it has to stand on the reception given to it
by those of whom the editor knows nothing, or they
of him personally ; hence it must be independent of
its editor. Nor is it wise, for if among the nine-
teen failures, it will be treasured against the Esti-
tor's name ; while success creates jealousy. The
work too is in another way impeded, for the opi-
nion of a successful paper carries far more weight
than the opinion of a successful individual ; there-
fore the editor robs the journal to clothe himself with
some of its influence, au influence he may not even
have gained for it. One of the reasons that American
public men care so little what American papers say
of them is, that they know the man who says it, and
.are aware, as may be the general public, that the
charges were trumped up outof envy, hatred, and ma-
lice. It is not the charge of a carefully edited organ
dealing fairly with a name, but the ipse dixit of Mr.
So-and-So. American statesmen can . survive as
public men, charges of fraud, peculation, untruth,
because these are so frequently made without foun-
dation that they cease to be really believed, while the
designs of wolves are forwarded by people getting
used to, and caring nothing for, the constant alarm
of " Wolf, Wolf," where often there is no wolf.
The difference between the power of the American
press and that of the English press on this point
is marked. No British statesman could remain
under a direct charge by any respectable jour-
nal involving his honour, being compelled either
to show its falsehood or to retire from public life,
as well as from society, while a journal which ma-
liciously and untruthfully published such an accu-
sation would not merely be made an example of iu
Court for libel, but would lose its position among
its contemporaries, and its circulation among the
public. No men are more interested than Editors
in the punishment, of an editor who permits his
journal to be made the vehicle of malicious slan-
ders, for the direct tendency is to injure the press,
and therefore the fraternity in public estimation.
This difference of giving prominence to the writer
on the one side, or reducing him to a cypher on the
other, which all must allow, who know the press
of both countries, is due to the anonymous charac-
ter of English journalism. It has this among its
many good effects, the editor not being himself per-
sonally attacked is not provoked into doing what
all must consider a dastardly act, that of using
the powerful weapon he happens to have in his.
hand against an unarmed antagonist. There`
is a sense of fair play implanted in human na-
ture which checks even the inclination to do so, •
and leads other editors when the tendency towards,
it in a brother is seen, effectually to suppress him.
When the editor's name is more prominent than
the name of the journal, those whose opinions, as well
as whose conduct it attacks, are only too happy to
get hold of a real, erring, sinful, mortal in the in-
dividual, putting aside the myth which shrouds him
in the organ when they are better able to attack on
equal terms, just as if the Pope were stripped of the
sacred character whichclothes him with infallibility,
and he stood in the arena with plain John Smith
and Joe Brown. We do not mean to do his Holi-
ness the injustice of comparing him with a common
editor; we only avail ourselves of the highest illus-
tration of what a man gains by being invested with
the impalpable, and can speak like an oracle from
behind a screen, the voice only being heard. School-
boys and young men emerging from colleges start in
life with a dash of common conviction in their
minds that what is in print is true, as everything
they have been learning was from print. It ought not
to be the task a journalist gives himself to divest
them with the utmost speed of any such impression,
nor should the latter strive to deprive the former of
the idea that there is dignity in letters ; yet, that is
what many do, attacking each other personally, an-
swering an argument by a lampoon on the cut of an
editor's coat, or the uncouthness of his appearance.
Professor Goldwin Smith, who by the way denies
that he ever said as reported by telegraph " that the
American press was not universally celebrated for
its intelligence," does not deny that he retorted its
censures on him by alluding to the undignified
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its Editor. The following is the commencement of a
leading article in the Mobile Tribune, which is
con-
tinued in the same strain to prove its title :—" A
Chronic Liar.—The editor of the New York Tribune
has so long and persistently proclaimed himself as
an honest man that it is fair to presume he really
thinks he is." Mr Ilugh Hastings has written in
a manner that would never be tolerated in Eng-
land about Mr. Greeley, but so much is it the cus-
tom in America that people only laugh. Whatever
is published in a great journal is discussed as the opi-
nion of its editor, and whenever he travels his name
always appears in connection with his paper. Thus
the tendency is fostered towards personalities and
its attendant evils, which certainly outweigh what-
ever good may be in the system. Whether this is
due to the curiosity of the people or to the vanity of
the individuals, or whether the citizens have been
educated into relishing these personal details about
men they know nothing of individually, we do not
pretend to say, but we do say that were it not for
this practice, it would be no exaggeration to award
to the press of New York, the palm of excellence.