modesty of his question. "Yes," asserted Fletcher, with oracular emphasis, "Lord Chancellor, or anything he desires." Brougham, as it happened, did become Lord Chancellor for a spell, but not, we may rest assured, because he once wrote an article on chemistry; and, notwithstanding Fletcher's confident prophecy, no one at that time imagined that the path to professional advancement lay through the printing office. Jeffrey himself was not so loth to meddle with journalism as Sir Walter and Lockhart were; but he too had qualms, he too was greatly afraid of thereby injuring his professional prospects. "The objection," he writes, "may be rested on the notion that the editor of a periodical work, whatever its political character might be, and even if it were purely literary and without any politics, had derogated from the personal dignity required in a judge, and ought not to presume so high. From the very first I have been anxious to keep clear from any tradesmanlike concern in the Review, and to confine myself pretty strictly to intercourse with gentlemen only, even as contributors. It would vex me, I must own, to find that, in spite of this, I have lowered my own character, and perhaps even that of my profession, by my connection with a publication which I certainly engaged with on very high grounds, and have managed, I think, without dirtying my hands in any paltry matters."

Jeffrey, it will be seen, lays stress not upon the character of the articles in his Review, nor upon the tendency of the doctrines and policies they advocate, but upon the fact that the Review is a periodical work. On all periodical publications the onus lay of proving that they were not merely tradesmanlike enterprises.

In view of this, was it not a bold task Mr. Benjamin Disraeli undertook when he crossed the Border to offer

Lockhart the editorship of a London newspaper; or is it strange that he sought refuge in euphemisms and described his newspaper editorship as the director-generalship of a most important organ? His diplomacy was all in vain. To old Auchinleck, Samuel Johnson was none the less a dominie though he called his school an "aca-ademy"; and Lockhart knew quite well that he would be none the less a newspaper editor though he should call himself a director-general.

Many an advocate and barrister among Lockhart's contemporaries would have thought it beneath his dignity to contribute to the periodical press. But there were exceptions to the rule, and eminent among them was Croker, who-as many Irishmen dopossessed the journalistie instinct. And Croker, before Disraeli's attempt, had endeavored to enlist Lockhart as a journalist, in the interests of his party, as he was to do again later. Nay, when the Guardian was being promoted, "to maintain the principles of morality and respect for constitutional authority," he wrote asking Lockhart not to canvass for advertisements, but, what was almost as bad, to find out some one who would canvass for advertisements and get subscribers. And Sir Walter, who unhappily knew too much about the commercial side of literature, did obtain a list of subscribers and forwarded it to Croker-a tradesmanlike transaction surely! But Mr. Croker was not in the least ashamed of such transactions. On the contrary he rather plumed himself on his prowess; and he had notions of his own of the future of journalistic enterprise.

Not long ago, Lord Rosebery suggested it might solve many difficulties could we have a dual Cabinet-two men for each office, one to act and one to talk. Lord Rosebery was anticipated by Croker, but Croker's idea was that the second man should not talk,

but write leading articles, defending and extolling his own department. Where the aspirants are always many, and the offices limited in number, the Croker plan would obviously simplify the task of Cabinet construction immensely, provided the able and brilliant editor were made equal in status and salary with his right honorable colleague. And, instead of being pestered at question time, it would be far pleasanter for a Government to be able, through, their editor-ministers, to hint, to deny, to leave people in their errors, or to reveal ministerial intentions, as circumstances appeared to demand. Of himself-he had had some experience of the office-Croker says, "I have heretofore conveyed to the public articles written by Prime Minister and Cabinet Ministers, and sometimes have composed such articles under their eye -they supplied the fact and I supplied the tact, and between us we used to produce considerable effect." "The times are gone by when statesmen might safely despise the journals, or only treat them as inferior engines, which might be left to themselves, or committed wholly to the guidance of persons wholly unacquainted with the views of the Ministry."

It was with such views that Mr. Croker in 1829-his second attempt tried to enlist Lockhart, believing him to be a person who could furnish tact, if supplied with fact. His success was no greater than Mr. Disraeli's. How could it have been? As is evident from the correspondence that passed between them, neither Sir Walter nor his son-in-law shared Croker's views on the political possibilities and personal advantages of journalism. "I will not, even to serve the Duke, mix myself up with newspapers," says Lockhart. "That work it is which has damned Croker"-as perhaps it did in the end. "As for Croker's hints about the advantages of being constantly among the

rulers of the land, why, I do not envy being constantly before them in that capacity"-no, not even though it should show honors in the regions about Fleet Street and in the groves of Eatanswill.

From about the time of the Reform Bill the preponderating weight of journalistic influence was on the side of the Whigs, partly because the Whigs courted the press, and partly for the more direct reason that Whiggery was then in fashion. Simultaneously, although not necessarily as a consequence, the journalist acquired a better social standing than before. In 1829 Sir Walter had written to Lockhart, "Your connection with any newspaper would be disgrace and degradation. would rather sell gin to the poor people and poison them in that way. Besides, no gentleman can ever do that sort of work by halves. He must, while he retains a rag of a shirt to cover his nakedness, be inferior to the bronzed, mother-naked, thorough-going gentlemen of the press." The gentlemen of the press, nevertheless, made their way, and lived down their reputation as conscienceless soldiers of fortune.

I

Froude, commenting on the offer of employment which Carlyle received through Captain Sterling, and moralizing upon the incompatibility between journalism and private integrity, suggests that journalists constitute an army in which men's souls belong to the commanding officer, their enemies being chosen for them, and they being bound to fight and ask no questions. Carlyle himself would not have taken it so seriously. For the able editor he had no great admiration as a rule, and he takes care to let us know it; but he does not judge him in the austere spirit of his disciple-laughs at him rather, as Dickens does at Mr. and Mrs. Pott. And in the editor in the concrete, when that editor is Edward Sterling, he finds

a stubborn instinctive sense of what is manful, strong, and worthy, and an eye quick to detect the charlatan. Even his chops and changes have their merits; his denunciation of Toryism one day, and his recognition of Wellington and Peel as fathers of their country the next, being interpreted as tokens of a consistency deeper than what the mob takes for consistency. Lockhart had declared, in his proud way, that, if he were to associate with the Duke of Wellington, it would not be as a journalist. But this Irishman was differently constituted, and even Carlyle admires the way in which he carried it off-his graceful deference to great ladies, his politeness to potentates, and his geniality in the company of clubbable men. Driving up and down in his chariot, going busily among busy men, rolling about all day in the clubs and in London society, Tonans, by testimony of Sauerteig himself, is a brisk and cheery figure, despite the fact that the result of his various activity is just "three hundred and sixty-five opinions in the year upon every subject." Living before the days of telegraphs, cables, telephones, news agencies, and syndicates, Sterling, as Carlyle sketches him, played up to the popular (and largely fanciful) ideal of the daily editor.

At one in the morning, when all had vanished into sleep, his lamp was kindled in his library; and there twice or thrice a week, for a three hours' space, he launched his bolts which next morning were to shake the high places of the world. Let the most gifted intellect, capable of writing epics, try to write such a leader for the morning newspapers. No intellect but Edward Sterling's could do it.

But "ne me dites jamais ce bête de mot," Mr. Carlyle; the impossible was done even to greater perfection by one of Sterling's successors, the most influential journalist who ever wrote for

the English daily press; and done under conditions as unfavorable for deliberate composition-on coming home from theatre or dinner party, while the boy waited. To the professional journalist there is nothing extraordinary in writing a full leader (with its three paragraphs, to conform with the three propositions of a syllogism, if one only knew it) on short notice, in the small hours; that is his business, and he lays himself out for it. But Reeve (for to him we refer) was not a "professional" journalist; leader-writing was for him a parergon. Although he supplied the Times with an article four or five times a week, he had his day's work to do in an important public office; and he went much into society. For a man so occupied, the production of a full leader almost daily for a morning paper was an exacting task. It was not, however, the rapidity of his production nor the difficulties under which he wrote that distinguished Reeve's work for the daily press; it was the authoritative weight of what he wrote. He realized the dream Croker had dreamed, and, without any loss of that self-respect which Lockhart so justly prized, he acted as journalistic medium between Ministers and the public. The secret of his success was that he was not a "professional" journalist, but a public servant who turned his position to account in a fashion that would not now be tolerated.

Probably no one had ever written so much in the English press with equal opportunities of acquiring information on the subjects I professed to treat [says Reeve in note]. During a great portion of these an autobiographical fifteen years I lived on terms of confidential correspondence and intercourse with several of the leading ministers of England and France-more especially with M. Guizot and Lord Clarendon, while Delane acted as a means of communication with Lord Aberdeen. Through Mr. Greville, my own chief

and afterwards colleague, who had originally introduced me to Barnes in 1840, and sanctioned my writing for the paper, I could always ascertain what was going on; and I question whether there was any person out of the Cabinet more correctly acquainted with the course of affairs; indeed, sometimes things reached me which the bulk of the Cabinet did not know. The consequence of the information was that, although I am not conscious of ever having published what it was desirable to conceal, the Times became a power in Europe more dreaded by kings and more read by statesmen than the most elaborate despatches.

Making due allowance for the personal equation, this statement may be accepted as historical; and when we consider the difficulties Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had with the early Victorian Ministries, how little successful they sometimes were in impressing their views of foreign politics on foreign secretaries, how partially informed they not unseldom were of what was going on, how impossible they sometimes found it to be to put themselves right with the public; and when we compare their disability with Reeve's intimate knowledge of home and Continental politics and his unquestionable power in shaping public opinion at home and abroad, we are disposed to ask whether as leader-writer he did not in some directions exercise more political influence than his Sovereign herself.

Imaginative journalists have sometimes dreamed of doing what Reeve did, but on a more extensive scale; and they have indulged in extravagant visions of the immense power that organ should wield which was constantly in touch with Kaisers and Kings, statesmen, generals, and financiers; the men most distinguished in literature, science, and art. They have neglected to observe that almost no one, not even the local bellman, supplies newspapers

with information simply in order to have the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, made public; that it is one thing to get information, and another to be able to appreciate its worth or its worthlessness; that the journalist to whom information is merely marketable copy will be told only as much as it suits the purpose of his informant to tell him; and that, were he told more, he could not always be trusted to make a good use of it. Even under the most favorable circumstances, confidential intercourse between ministers and professional journalists is seldom for the benefit of the public service, or for the best interests of ministers or of journalists, and it is distinctly to be deprecated where the press is conducted simply and solely as a commercial enterprise; where the journalist is the sandwich-man of the advertiser.

Only an utterly irresponsible journalist will publish everything that will sell, or say all that he thinks, irrespective of the harm he may do. It would be no loss of dignity for a journal to tone down its philippics were it pointed out that they were doing real harm. But the harm should be proved to be public harm. Ministers step beyond their province when they attempt to control the press in the criticism of party tactics or of their own speech and conduct. On one occasion when he had been chastised in the Whig Review, by the masterly hand of Mr. Robert Lowe, in a fashion so entertaining to friend and foe that a second edition was called for, Lord John Russell, it is said, not only vetoed the sale of the journal, but very strongly reprimanded the publishers for allowing their editor by his general course of action to "plunge the party in a swamp of political immorality." Now interference between an editor and his publisher in this way is about as mean a form of meeting criticism as it ever entered into the heart of a public man

It is

to conceive. In this instance no mischief was done, the publisher standing by his editor, and the editor by his contributors; but it is well that public men should keep their own place, and meet public criticism openly. Lord John had some ground of complaint in that his actual assailant was a colleague. A colleague should not shoot at a colleague from under cover. doubly disgraceful when, as has sometimes happened, a Cabinet Minister, instead of meeting his colleague frankly in council, badgers him in the press, and impedes him in the execution of a difficult policy which has the support of a majority. Such a course is an abuse of journalism and a public danger. We question whether it is for the public advantage for even a prominent leader of the Opposition to be intimately associated with the press. Enthusiastic politicians can scarcely be expected to understand the conditions under which journalists do their work. Mr. Bright, for example, who himself knew no fear and little restraint, appears to have thought that the writers on the Morning Star should be equally bold. "I would not think of the interests of the proprietors, I would only think of what was just and right." But the journalist must think of both; the real misfortune is that sometimes he cannot do both, that he cannot at the same time promote the interest of the proprietor and act fairly by the public.

That Governments should have no dealings with the press at all is a sound general rule, and it is especially so where financial considerations come into play. The probity with which the Commercial columns of our leading journals have been conducted has been one of the most honorable distinctions of British journalism; and although it is not given to every one to put a good thing in the way of the Government, as Mr. Greenwood once did, we dare say that many a financial writer, as a

matter of everyday duty, frequently does the public a service by giving it information which it would profit him to keep to himself. But Governments should not count on this; they should not throw temptations in the way of journalists. Information such as that given by Lord Aberdeen to the Times of the intended abolition of the corn duties might easily prove a temptation too strong to be resisted. As it was, although the information was confided to a journalist who knew his duty and did it, the object of the Minister was to influence the American Government and the American exporter of grain. It is not always possible to be so sure of your man as Lord Aberdeen was; and, in all matters bearing on finance, ministers should take from journalists all the hints they can get, but they should give none.

Nor do ministers invariably find it to be for their own or for the public advantage to keep their journalist friends privately posted up in news and views. They thereby place their reputation and popularity at the discretion of the journalist, since to their text it is his function to add the persuasive commentary. And while they give him hints, the form in which he presents the hints to the public is the mould into which public opinion runs. In accepting suggestions from ministers the journalist obtains the means of controlling the actions of his advisers; he makes or mars their reputation and he moulds public opinion. At the time when they were hand and glove with the Times leaderwriters, ministers found that they not only gave the journalists the means of shaping public opinion, but, as on the Continent it was believed, not that the leader-writers inspired public opinion, but that public opinion controlled them, the readiness with which foreign ministers accepted the Times as the voice of England on foreign policy was more embarrassing than helpful. The Gov