The Sun.
London, England, 1861-08-26 00:00:00

LORD BROUGHAM ON THE PRESS.

Lord Brougham's compliment to the Press, with
which he winds up the Social Science meeting,
should be acknowledged in some way, and we do
not know who there is to acknowledge it but the
Press itself. A man replies when his health is drunk;
we must do the same. At the same time our noble
and illustrious eulogist knows as well as ourselves
that the Press cannot accept the praise of indi-
viduals, however distinguished. It is contrary to the
very nature of its work and mission to do so. There
is one great impersonal tribunal before whose eye
the Press al ways stands, and the evidences of its
merit, whatever that may be, are facts which lie
before the whole world. They are simply the con-
tents of any one day's paper. What is it that every
day's paper gives ? In one word, it is an epitome of
one day's history of England. When people say,
as they sometimes do, that they have no time for
reading anything but the newspapers, they are not
fully conscious often of the reason of this diffi-
culty. The reason is that there is absolutely so
much that is worth reading in every day's paper.
There is everything there that the world has pro-
duced—the whole action of society during the last
24 hours, up to the last minute. One might think
beforehand that what was striking, remarkable, and
worth knowing would only happen periodically,
but the press reveals the actual life of the world,
and shows what a boiling vortex it is. Every min ute
something is thrown up the surface which dis-
closes a history. There is man in every shape before
us. Parliament is as good as a play ; many a law
report is better than the best novel. What plots
come out ! What family mysteries ! You may de-
spise horrors, but you devour them nevertheless.
We need not mention the every-day clockwork
business of the world. And all these are facts, real

living facts, and all as fresh as the dew. The very
advertisements are facts of the day, and always
well worth reading. We cannot be surprised, then,
if a man with such fare before him is loath to leave
it; if he says to himself " What better things can
I have than facts, if I go to the reign of Sesostris, or
the shepherd kings, if I go to the dynasties of the
Arsacidm and Seleucithe, and the fights of the
Pisistratidce and and Alcmwonidm ?"
But, while men devour the facts of the daily
press, they are not perhaps wholly aware of the
difficulties of the process by which they are col-
lected and put into shape. Newspaper intelligence
is one of the great miracles of the day. You come
down to breakfast in a country village, and find on
your table the important tidings of what was pass-
ing in the political world, not a week ago or even
yesterday, but only a fes hours ago, in Sardinia or
Hungary—in fact, just before you went to bed.
Here is a sample in yesterday's paper :—" August
22, Evening,—The following is the text of the
Royal Rescript," &c. That news was on a thousand
country breakfast tables on the morning of the 23d.
This is having the ends of the earth brought to your
very door. You have an hourly map of what is
going on over Europe placed before you. You have
the news from Pesth quicker than you have it from
the other end of your own town. But nothing is a
miracle at the end of three weeks. It becomes an
order of nature, something which goes on as a mat-
ter of course, like the vegetation, or the earth's
rotation, or the procession of the Equinoxes. The
speech, word for word, of a great orator delivered
300 miles off greets you the first thing in the morn-
ing. You expect it, and therefore are not surprised.
It is as natural asif you had heard him with your
own ears. Then there is this vast mass of matter to
be condensed by selection. People who only look
at the broad sheet would think the great difficulty
was to fill it. The difficulty is exactly the opposite.
Nothing but a constant hydraulic pressure can
bring the history of a world's day into the shape
in which it is presented to the public.
But Lord Brougnam's compliment applies more
particularly to the extraordinary services of the
press. Does a war break out in the Crimea, in China,
in the United States, our correspondent is on the
spot immediately. He has to catch all the charac-
teristic aspects of the scene ; to watch, observe,
examine, ride, write under a broiling sun or in a re-
laxing climate; wherever anything worth remark-
ing is going on he has to be on the spot ; before he
writes he must see ; no epicurean author's armchair
for him, no writing at leisure, no waiting for inspi-
ration. Time and tide wait for no man. If every
incident is not set down as it occurs it vanishes and
is lost in the hurry of the changing scene. There
are still worse things to which he exposes himself ;
he has to share the same danger with the soldier,
the peril of climate, the peril even of the fight ; and
we need not allude now to the melancholy issue of
that exposure in the case of two of our most valued
correspondents. A Canadian princely tour of plea-
sure and compliment must be described as faith-
fully as a campaign. The public at home must
have a graphic picture of every last landing, last
review, last dinner, last ball, last triumphal pro-
cession under waving flags, through flower-strewn
streets, past welcoming windows. The whole earth,
in short, is ransacked in catering to the British
public's appetite for news. It has the best of every-
thing, served in the best way and with the highest
finish that the art admits of. An Englishman sits
down every day to a perfect banquet of news, at
which he has a capital dish from every country and
clime under the sun. The whole world spreads its
treasures before him. He knows that nothing can
go on upon the face of the earth, from a Coronation
in Moscow to an Agricultural Show, from the field
of Solferino to a skirmish in New Zealand, which
he will not have fully and amply described to him.
The tendency is, however, when people know all
about everything without the least trouble to them-
selves that they somewhat underrate the labour
which this result has cost to others. The very re-
gularity, skill, and success of the caterer conceals
the amount of the difficulties which he has had to
surmount; the very largeness of the supply disguises
the painful access to the source from which it is all
provided. An Englishman sits down to his imperial
table on which lies every delicacy under heaven,
with much the same feeling with which the Roman
epicures reclined at those gorgeous feasts for which
British and Asiatic waters had been emptied, the
vineyards of the Archipelago been stripped of their
clusters, whole districts of wild boars depopulated,
and myriads of peacocks decapitated. All this was
the order of nature to the Roman bon-vivant, and the
English Press is the order of nature to the English
lover of news. Fortunati nimiun t sua si bona norint ;
—the British public is in the situation of a great
man who is waited on so attentively, and has all his
wants anticipated so correctly that he imagines
everything comes of itself. The process of the for-
mation of every day's paper is as occult and unknown
a process to the general reader as the formation of
the earth on which he stands or the growth of spe-
cies. He sees the surface of the earth enamelled
with flowers, trees luxuriant with foilage, rich mea-
dows, smiling crops, and smooth pastures, but he does
not penetrate below the pleasant surface into the
dark subterranean world of geology with its mighty
forces that have been in operation, and its suc-
cession of strata upon which all this luxuriance is
based. The inner world of the Press is, in the
same way, a secret and a mystery to the general
English public, and the intricate machinery and the
ceaseless labour and anxiety by which the regu-
larity and copiousness of their news are secured are
not thought of. The news comes of itself, telegraphs
speak spontaneously, correspondents' letters fall
from the clouds, and the printed broadsheet ap-
pears by a law of nature upon their tables every
morning.— Times.

A NEW SORT OF COCK-FIGHTING.—A singular
exhibition took place at Hazebrouck three days ago. Two
men carrying large packets arrived in the town and sta-
tioned themselves near the Hotel de Ville. They waited
until a crowd had collected, and then, to the surprise of the
people, they produced from the packets a number of cocks,
some large and some small, and made them crow against
each other, announcing that the birds were engaged in a
competition to see which would crow best. Al many as
twenty cocks were engaged, and eventually the larger cocks
were declared the winners. A collection made by the men
amply recompensed them for their trouble in giving the
exhibition.

BALLOON A CCID EN T.—Mr. Coxwell, accom-
panied by two young gentlemen, Messrs. Thomas and
Alfred Pearson, ascended on Monday last at seven o'clock
from Congleton, Cheshire, under the influence of a strong
westerly wind, which soon carried them in the direction of
Buxton Moors. At this place Mr. Coxwell prepared to
descend, but on nearing the earth he found the wind was
too strong for him, and, worse still, there was nothing for
the grappling iron to catch. In this plight the occupants
of the car were dragged along till a stone wall checked the
pace for a moment. Such was the velocity with which
they came in contact with the wall, that a complete gap
was made. The Messrs. Pearson were almost thrown out,
and were severely hurt. The balloon now became un-
manageable and rushed along the earth, dashing through
three or four more walls (which divide the moor into plots)
receiving violent concussions, before its progress was ar-
rested by- its bursting. Although tLe basket was a new
and very strong one, the sides were forced in, and the
occupants more or less injured. Mr. Coxwell escaped with
bruises and cuts only. Mr. T. Pearson received severe in-
juries of the skull, and Mr. A. Pearson a compound free_
, tun 91 tle Orvarlm.