The Sun.
London, England, 1867-11-18 00:00:00

RADICAL JOURNALISM.

(From the Round TalCie.)
One of the most decided and immediate effects of
any marked political movement in this country is that
which is produced on current journalism. A news-
paper or other periodical which has identified itself
with opinions that in the flow of events become
unpopular is pretty certain to feel this effect in a
direct and unmistakable manner. The public would
be surprised to know the exact extent of the fluc-
tuations in the circulations of the principal journals
in the city of New York during the past few years.
This has sometimes resembled nothing so much as
a game of seesaw, in which when one party goes up
the other is sure to go down, and the measures of
ascent and descent are exactly the same. Of course
the scope of the gyration is mainly determined by
the degree of partisanship to which a particular
journal may have been devotel ; the moderates, as
they are called by their friends, the trimmers, as
they are called by their foes, suffer least from the
mutations of public feeling, because they have dared
least in the office of directing them ; but a paper

like the Tribune, extreme to the backbone, and too
much given to be coarse and offensive in the expres-
sion of its opinions—a paper usually vigorous if
generally inelegant, and of little weight or value
apart from politics and news—is sure to suffer
most from political reaction, for the very reason

that its own characteristics do so much to produce
it. The feeling of dislike for journals which have

been closely identified with what are termed Radi-
cal opinions is becoming just now so general and so
decided as to suggest examination to see how
such a sentiment is justified, or to what extent it
should be pronounced ungenerous or irrational.
There can be no doubt but that perfect freedom.
for the press is called for by the genius of American
institutions, and it seems contrary to their spirit, if
not to their letter, that a despotism in the shape of
public opinion should be put forth to punish those
who have merely exercised what is universally con-
ceded to be a right. But that such a disposition
exists seems certain. In the metropolis especially
the feeling against the Radical press is bitter
and almost universal. Its efforts, judicious and
natural as they are, to assume a more moderate
tone than that of a year or more ago, appear
rather to provoke the public mind than to con-
ciliate it ; for it is everywhere urged that they
expressed their real views when strong in popular
support, and change front now out of selfish regard
to their pecuniary interests. Hence the papers
which have always been known as Radical, in New
York, in New England, and throughout the country,
but which have lately striven to induce public for-
getfulness of the fact, are more disliked and con-
temned than those which have boldly nailed their
Radical flags to the mast and preserved consistency
even at the cost of prosperity.
The cause of the feeling against the Radical jour-
nals is easily pointed out. It is easy also to show
why such a feeling, once partly dormant in some
quarters and little felt, if at all, in others, should be
so almost universally cherished and expressed and
so obviously on the increase at this time. It is felt,
in the first place, that Radical policy has had a long
and fair trial, and that it has failed. It has failed
to bind up the wounds of war, failed to restore the
blessings of peace, failed in its management of the
national finances, failed to bring about that cordial
reconciliatio❑ between the two great sections of the
country which is, however, the indispensable pre-
requisite to national prosperity. Now a certain
stubbornness and patience are strong characteristics
of the Anglo-Saxon race. The people sustained the
Republican party through the war because they
were firmly resolved to preserve the national unity,
and thought that end would be imperilled by stop-
ping, to use their leader's homely phrase, to swap
horses while crossing a stream. It is our convic-
tion, frequently heretofore expressed, that the
people would have sustained the Republican party
still longer had the war continued, sustained it,
that is until its close. This conviction, we may
observe in passing, has been challenged by some,
who point to the evidences of discontent supplied by
past elections as showing the likelihood of Repub-
lican overthrow if things grew worse or did not
grow better in the field. The answer to this is
that such overthrow was constantly predicted—by
Mr. Weed and others—but that it never came to
pass. We have, therefore, the best of the argu-
ment so far as facts go, since of the two prognosti-
cations one was constantly verified, the other not.
Moreover, historical precedents across the ocean, as
witness the history of Pitt's Administration passim,
have repeatedly shown that lack of success in the
field, mismanagement in general, any or all causes
which bear heavily on the people and tend to make
a war unpopular, will not turn the scale against na-
tional vanity, or obstinacy, or patriotism—call it
what you will—so as to make them abandon the
afruggle or withhold support from thoie who have
its direction. Experience has shown that the sins
an administration or a party makes are punished in
such cases afterwards, not while the war is going
on ; and the immediate political history of our own
country is not, from present appearances, likely to
furnish an exception. Mistaking a characteristic
phase of national determination for attachment
pure and simple to their own party dogmas,
the Radical journals have unhappily continued
to stir up and aggravate strife between sections
and colours long after they bad ceased to be
in real sympathy with the masses of the nation,
long after indeed, in the opinion of many, the oc-
casion for their existence at all in their partisan and
sectional capacity had been removed. It is they
who have made the North insolent in triumph,
the South sullen in defeat. It is they who
have stuffed down the throat of the country,
until it has become fairly surfeited and sickened
with the load, the crotchets of the ideologists of
New England; those spectral pragmatists, all
meum and no tuuna, all cerebrum and no cerebellum,
who have done so much good and so much harm,
and who, no more than the Secessionists, are
destined to be the rulers of the country. The
people have been slowly but steadily awakening to
the truth that the Radical journals, the opponents
of that narrow and sectional temper of New Eng-
land which is as essentially antagonistic as was that
of the secessionists to a truly national and cosmopo-
litan spirit, have exerted a highly mischievous in-
fluence, tending to postpone reconstruction, incul-
cating vindictive and most un-Christian passions,
and tending to perpetuate the onerous burdens of
the whole community. In view of such persuasions
it is not surprising that these organs should now be
iu a languishing condition, or that the partisan
warmth which once gave them support should have
so generally changed to coolness or aversion. Re-
garding their mission as a sectional and temporary
rather than a national and permanent one, it is not
strange that the people should discourage what they
perceive has outlived its usefulness.
This is, perhaps, to some extent an illiberal view.
Judgment is inevitably swayed by the passions of
surroundingmasses, and it is easy for genuine patriot-
ism in the heat and fury of war to believe that its
side is entirely in the right and must needs always
continue so. The difference, however, between the
honest masses of Republicans and the Radical journals
consists in this—that the latter have degenerated in
too many cases into mere paid advocates of their
party, and have thus fallen inevitably into the
habit of preferring party to country. This the
people see, and this the people will not countenance
or tolerate. A Nemesis is at work in this reaction
which promises to give symmetry to various un-
completed fragments of history. It was said not
long ago that two sets of revolutionists, two perverse
factions, were battling shoulder to shoulder to effect

the dissolution of the Union, the destruction of the
Republic. One of these has done its work, and
had its reward. The fate of the other, so far as it
may yet be undecided, it is not difficult to pro-
phesy,

THE CATHOLIC BISHOPS AND OXFORD.

The great question of education for the higher

classes in England is assuming every day a more
serious character. Everyone knows of the " unani-
mous " conclusion which our venerated body of
bishops, with the late lamented cardinal at their
head, came to some few years ago upon this mat-
ter. Most Catholics thought that nothing further
would be required, and that no one who had any
pretensions to be a true member of the Church

would ever afterwards dream of sending his son
to Oxford. We thought that, as a body, we had
too much reverence for ecclesiastical authority,

and too true a sense of submission for any of us
to think of taking any other course but that which

had been pointed out to us. Oxford was repre-
sented to us as absolutely unfit for training Catholic

youth. Its professors were dangerous, its morals
decidedly corrupt, its tone rationalistic and irreli-
gious, and its atmosphere thoroughly unwholesome
for young Catholics. The results of an experi-
ment were clearly foretold ; faith weakened, re-
ligious fervour cooled, sacraments neglected, in-

differentism begun, " fast" ways adopted, im-

morality strongly developed. All this was pointed
out in strong language, and everything that could
be said was said to convince reasonable men of it.
But what happened? We were amazed, and all
good men were scandalized, to Nee that, after all,
and in spite of all, there were some amongst us
who ventured to send their sons into the danger—
into the atmosphere of foul corruption—into the
arms of the syren, whose embrace was death. Good
heavens! It was a bold thing—it was a cruel thing.
The innocent Catholic boy came forth from the
hallowed precincts of his college, where he had
frequented the sacraments, and loved our Lady's
altar, and delighted to kneel beneath the shadow
of Mary's statue, and played in the blithe air under
the watchful eye of good men, and was growing
strong in an atmosphere healthful and bracing,
because it was Christian and Catholic. You could
see innocence in the glance of his beaming eye ; it
flashed from his face in his open smiles ; it rang
out clear in characteristic tones in his joyous shout
and merry laugh. He was growing into a true
man, of whom we should have been proud; he
would have been a true hearted Catholic, a lover
of the Pope and the Church, and one who would
have been as the " salt of the earth" in this cor-
rupt age. But he was wanting, it was thought, in
" polish ;" he lacked " breadth of mind ;" he needed

" friction " with men of refined education and

high intellectual acquirements. He wanted the
finishing touch" given to the work of his edu-
cation. And so, in spite of bishops, he went to
Oxford. He went without priest's, or bishop's, or
God's blessing on his head. And, alas! what good
could he do without such blessing ? We say it was
a bold, a hazardous, and a cruel thing to send him
there. It was no true parents' love that could do
it. It was like taking a delicate flower out of the
mild air of the conservatory, and suddenly trans-
planting it to the top of the bleak, cold mountain.
It needs must wither in the wintry blast. It was
like taking a tender child from amidst the open
fields, and the sweet-scented flowers, and rippling
brooks, and shutting him up in a charnel -house, all
fetid with a foul and noxious atmosphere. It was
a hard thing. He went pure, and humble, and
obedient, and in a healthy tone of mind, with the
love of Mary in his heart, and attachment to his
religion deep-rooted in his soul. But, alas ! Oxford
was a fatal change for him. No daily Mass was
there as in his college home, no Blessed Lady's
statue to smile purity on him, no altar rails
thronged by young communicants. All was cold
and bare and empty, and altogether different from
the cherished home where he had spent so many
happy years. He never before could realize what it
was to be without the regular Communion•days,
and our Blessed Lady's statue, and the Holy Sacri-
fice of the Mass. And so, in a short space of time,
great and sad changes took place with him. . . .
He came from Oxford to his home a withered
flower, a blighted being. The sunlight of his life
was quenched. He had been sent to acquire a
higher knowledge--to receive an intellectual polish.
He had, it is true, acquired knowledge, but it was
of a fatal kind. He had, perhaps, received a higher
external polish, but, fatal exchange ! the " beauty
from within" was all gone.
All this is not simply imaginary ; it has been
realized in more cases than one amongst those
young Catholics who have had the misfortune to
be sent to Oxford. Yea, it has been boldly said,
and so far without contradiction, that this has
happened in most cases. This is very sad to hear.
But what could we expect? Could any one suppose
that what was undertaken without a blessing,
nay, in spite of advice and solemn warnings from
the highest ecclesiastical authority in the country,
and even in spite of the disapproval of the highest
authority in the Church, could ever succeed, or
have any but a miserable issue ? No. The thing
was impossible. Education, without the blessing
of the Church, can bring no good. This has been
clearly proved. The Oxford venture has been a
miserable failure. And now our zealous bishops,
when lamentable examples of shipwreck can be
pointed out, are again raising their warning voice
on the dangers of Protestant Universities. They
are repeating their disapproval in the strongest
terms. They publish the following very strong
words of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda :
—" In the present case, where, as his Holiness has
declared, those who frequent the universities incur
an intrinsic and most grievous danger to purity of
morals, as well as to faith, which is absolutely
necessary for salvation, who can fail to see that
it is next to impossible to discover circumstances
which would allow Catholics, without sin, to attend
non-Catholic universities ?" " The Holy Father
has declared," says the Bishop of Hexham and
Newcastle, " non-Catholic universities to be a
proximate occasion of grievous sin to those who
frequent them. . . And as for discovering cir-
cumstances which would make it a serious and
adequate necessity' for Catholics in this country to
frequent our Protestant universities, it is truly
next to impossible to do so." The Bishop of
Beverley says : " The authority to which every
Catholic bows his head has at length spoken with
no uncertain sound ; controversy is set at rest, and
all hesitation as to the path of duty removed."
And, again : " The consequence is obvious, and
we feel bound to state it ; it would run thus : that
unless (what is next to impossible) the precautions
are such as to remove the imminence of the
danger, to pursue a course of studies in these uni-
versities would be grievously sinful in the sight of
God."

It is to be hoped that this second declaration of
our zealous bishops will have the desired effect.
They never raise the cry of alarm without good
reason. We see, in the case of Italy, how things
have happened as they foretold us. There were
some farseeing Catholics who, at the beginning of
this movement, would not believe that it would end
in an attack upon the Church. It was not a re-
ligious
movement at all, they said, and would not
resolve itself into one. The bishops did not take
wide views of things when they forewarned us that
the Church was in danger. It was the old false
alarm of " Wolf !" But we see who have been right.
And in the case of Oxford it is precisely the same.
Their predictions have been fulfilled ; their worst
fears realized. The scheme has had the pernicious
effect which they anticipated and foretold. The
whole thing has proved a mad, wild venture. It
has been, neither more nor less, an offering of
innocent childrento Moloch. The god-king looked
magnificent with his golden crown upon his head,
but as soon as, with open arms, he had received his
innocent victims, he let them fall into the fire.
This has been terrible and cruel work, and our
bishops are raising their voices again in Synod and
Pastoral Letter, to stop, if possible, this fatal
sacrificing of our fine young Catholic boys to the
English Moloch. It is to be hoped their warning
voices will be heard and heeded through the
length and breadth of the land i for our young