The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-12-15 00:00:00

debt of the company, until the whole question had been
fully considered and the method to be adopted respecting
its final extinguishment determined upon. The appoint-
ment of a❑ English managing Director, and such an alter-
ation of the statutes as would secure to Liverpool a proper
representation at the General Board, together with a more
complete control of the railroad to English shareholders
generally; and, in conclusion. the Committee strongly
pressed the Directors to attend a public muting in this
town in order to allay the fears and restore the confidence
of the shareholders resident in this neighbourhood.

The Directors, in reply, pledged theiriselyes not only to
give various points, above mentioned, their serious consi-
deration, but to further the views of the committee to the
utmost of their ability ; and with respect to a public mee-
ting, they suggestel that it would be better on every
account, to dellr such a meeting for a few weeks, in order
that they might obtain the presence of the Treasurer, Mr.
Leo Leppman ; and that such a report should be previ-
ously prepared, as would convey to the shareholders the
most ample information on every point that had hitherto
formed a subject of debate or dissatisfaction.
The Meeting, which lasted four hours, and which was
further attended by John Moss, Esq., the resident
English Commissary, seemed to give great satisfaction
to all parties ; and Mr. Holland having proposed a vote
of thanks to the Directors, which was carried unanimous-
ly, the meeting separated.

SOCIAL POSITION OF THE BRITISH
JOURNALIST.

The position of the journalist in this country is one of
the most anomalous character. No man can, in the pre-
sent day, refuse to admit the fact that the press has,
within the last few years, made vast strides both in influ-
ence and in respect ibility. It has become a powerful en-
gine, not only in the woild of politics, but in the world of
literature. Some of the soundest scholars, the deepest
thinkers, and accomplished writers are to be found upon
the columns of the daily and weekly metropolitan jour-
nals ; and many who would have been accounted stars of
the first magnitude, as contributors to the periodical li-
terature of the last generation, are looking on individually
unheeded and unknown in our provincial papers. The
age has passed away in which the newspaper was the mere
record of idle gossip, or personality ; the commentator
only upon the doings of statesmen or communities. Of
most of the great movements of the present day, whether
political or social, the press takes the initiative, the sug-
gestive. Statesmen may imagine that they can stand
alone ; parties may still exclaim when they contemplate
their successes, " Quorum pars magna fuimus''; but it
is the press which has moulded public opinion—it is the
journalist in his closet, whose vigorous intellect, whose
storing appeals or argumentative pleading, has ripened
the fruir, which other hands step in to pluck. The un-
known and obscure literary labourer has sown the grain;
but the shallow appropriator of his ideas it is who reaps
the harvest.

With all this acknowledged power and vast responsibi-
lity, the journalist has no standing in society, no place as-
signed him in the social scale. "Journalism,'' remarks
an able writer in Frazer's Magazine for the present
worth

" Journalism has by a combination of events been
raised to the rank of a profession. By a concurrence of
conspiring circumstances, it has gained influence over the
hearts and intellects of tne people. It has dratted into its
ranks education, information. and ability. It has exhi-
bited earnestio ss, eloquence, and brilliance. It has alto-
gether fulfilled its mission with dignity and integrity. It
has used power beneficially where it might have abused it.
It has remonstrated with factious license and popular
passion, where it might have ministered to the one and
pandered to the other. It has rarely forgotten the great
interests of the country or the duties of the legislature.
It has spoken out fearlessly against oppression, against
cruelty, against cant. It has been, in almost every in-
stance, truly national."
Yet, what is the consideration in which the journalist is
held by the community for which he has done, and is do-
ing, so much ? Has the most talented writer of the most
talented morning or evening journal the same standing as
the merest official hack or the petit aitre of the world of
letters? The author of a tenth-rate novel, or the perpe-
trator of a doze❑ pages of doggrel, is counted in every co-
terie, whilst the journalist, whose labours are devoted to
direct public opinion, and to whose critical fiat the petty
literature looks with trembling anxiety, is driven to de-
pend for his position in society to some extraneous claim
upon the public. The most insignificant member of the
legislature, who lives by pirating his thoughts and retails
his opinions as his own, would hesitate before admitting
the journalist, as such, into his private circle, or acknow-
ledging an intimacy in public. Even a vestryman or a
councillor looks down upon the man, whose advocacy has
raised him to the enjoyment of official existence, as his
inferior in station or i❑ worth.
This is not the case in other countries. The same
writer reminds us that :

" The journalist in Fran le has a station which is recog-
nised, because it is impossible riot to recognise the work-
ing of his talents and the operations of his intellect. But
the French journalist often exercises a fatal and pernicious
power. We, as a nation, have had reason to complain of
partial statements, inflammatory doctrines, and sectarian
jealousy. The French journalist addresses men of quick
feelings, not of sober judgment. He seeks to excite and
to please, not to convince or to conciliate. Instead of
assuaging he provokes evil passions ; instead of Consult-
ing the interests, he ministers to the prejudices of his
countrymen. But the French journalist is in the best
society. He is flattered by the homage of the rich and
the attention or toe fair. Ills name is mown 1n un poli-
tical circles with advantage, in his own with fame and
honour. He is sometimes a peer, always a celebrity.
His violence is described as zeal, his asperity as eloquence,
his encouragement of war as nationality. But to hi
English compeer, who neither condescends to vulgar
abuse, or deals in the fermentation of wretched prejudice,
there is no place assigned in the social circle. As for po-
litical rewards, except of the lowest kind, such things are
never dreamed of. Occasionally, indeed, a clever writer
steals into a nondescript office, without a name and al-
most without a salary, to exert on behalf of an ambiguous
and unintelligible minister the cleverness and the vigour
which he had displayed in the columns of The Times or
The Chronicle. But what English minister would ever
dream of holding the conductors of those two journals in
the same consideration in which the editors of La Presse
and the Debats are held by MM. Thiers and Guizot ; or
such writers as Mr. Everett and Mr. Webster, by the
government of the United States ?"
Undoubtedly this is a state of things which must ulti-
mately right itself. The respectable portion of the con-
ductors of the press have only to pursue the even tenor of
their way; and their power must ultimately be recognised
and themselves estimated justly. In the mean time,
however, it cannot be denied that the conduct of public
men towards the press is productive of infinite evil and
most dangerous. We cannot expect that the journalist
can at all times preserve his loyalty under circurnstinces
so discouraging as those to which he is at present sub-
jected. He is only human after all. The most serious
impediments are thrown in the way of his usefulness by
the state of isolation in which he is held. One of these is
his want of access of the best information, by which he is
sometimes led to make wrong statements or to draw false
inferences ; and it is only wonderful that, when he has,
as it were, to grope darkling for the truth, and to weigh the
thousand conflicting statements which are ever forcing in
upon him, his errors are so few and comparatively inno-
cuous. Let not our public even blame him for any inadver-
tences into which he is led. They have the remedy within
their own reach ; and might materially lighten their diffi-
culties and give increased correctness to his record of
passing events. The following are the concluding remarks
of the writer, from whom we have already quoted :
" Instead of the public taste having elevated the style
of newspaper composition, the newspaper writers have
raised the standard of the public taste. We believe that
at this very moment a coarser and rougher kind of com-
position would be better understood and more keenly re-
lished by the mass of general readers, than that which
the leading journals of London (and may we not add of
the provinces ?) have adopted. Is this a slight praise ?
Is it a small thing to have sacrificed a lucrative and ' tel-
ling' acerbity, an ud captandum vehemence, a popular
abusiveness, to a severer and more honest criticism ? Is
it nothing to have introduced the more delicate and
pointed weapons of political controversy in place of the
harder and more vulgar arms once in use ? Is it nothing
to lead instead of following, to correct instead of pander-
ing to public feeling ? Is it nothing to have preserved a
national sentiment in the midst of sectarian jealousies—
an English loyalty in the infectious atmosphere of class
contests and antipathies ? Is it nothing to have resisted
with success the prejudices of a rich proprietary, or to
have overcome the capricious bigotry of editorial igno-
rance ? Ile men who do these things deserve something
more than neglect and obscurity, yet they are neglected
and obscure. No honours await them, no position is
awarded them. Even the fame which they may have at-
tained in this department, may preclude success in their
ostensible and ' more respectable avocations.' We said
before that this evil must cure itself in time ; men of ta-
lent and learning will not long tolerate slight, contumely,
and obscurity. The nature of things is against such a
presumption ; but the means by which such an end may i
be accomplished is a question of vast importance. It sno
trivial social calamity for a nation to possess a number of
clever, discontented, and unscrupulous men. Discon-
tent soon darkens into vindictiveness, and vindictiveness
is seldom scrupulous. Men who think their fair claims
are neglected or overlooked, will set about their own way
of preferring them ; and no men have such an obvious
facility of building their own fortunes on the basis of pub-
lic tumult and class-disaffection as your " strong writers."
There are in this country, unfortunately, too many per-
sons with a command of capital, .who would be ready
enough to invest it in the diffusion of their own repub-
lican doctrines, who would pay largely for clever hands'
and ' powerful pens.' That this known temptation has
been so strenuously resisted, is more creditable to the
honour and pride of individual writers than to the good
sense of statesmen and politicians. What reward was
ever bestowed on the men who fought the hard and doubt-
ful fight of Conservatism in the columns of the press
through the memorable years of 1832, 1833, 1834, 183 D,
and 1836 ? If any one force more than another destroyed
the 'Whig ministry in 1841, it was the press, and yet how
has it been rewarded ? The men whose unceasing exer-
tions stamped odium and disgrace upon the Whigey"sed
wholly unnoticed by those whom they substituted in their
places. The egotism of Sir Robert Peel was as ungrate-
ful as the nepotism of his predecessors. And FO it will
continue to be till every politician in parliament, from
n
the premier down to the youngest lordly expectant, is
convinced by facts too startling to be paltered with, that
there is some danger in contemning a power which has
already virtually abolished military flogging, and bids
fairly to abolish the New Poor-law."