“But of what value can criticisms of the News and Express be, when a contemptible scribe is thus allowed to make the columns of these prints the vehicle for his own beastly malignity? What authority can belong to a reviewer who is obliged to say on the 9th of November, ‘I was guilty of a foul, cowardly, and unjustifiable calumny against a lady’s character on the 2nd of November.’ And these two papers belong to men who are so very particular that they turned off their sub—editors. Messrs. Powell and Wareing, because, forsooth, these gentlemen gave insertion to a particular bankruptcy case which the bankrupt himself had written to implore Bradbury and Evans not to publish!
“We hope the contemptible slanderer who ‘does the criticisms’ for the News and Express will treat his readers (two grown-up persons and a small boy for the News, and the small boy without the grown-up persons for the Express) with an account of the origin, progress, and present condition of those threepenny things. If so, he must state how the News first came out at five-pence with the intention of smashing every thing,—how Charles Dickens was the man entrusted with the obstetric process of introducing this phenomenon to the world,—how froth was never so frothy, and vapouring never so vapoury, as when the bills, placards, and advertisements appeared,—and how the mountain at last brought forth a mouse! In fact, no failure was ever more miserable—more ludicrous—more contemptible than that of the Daily News. When a friend once spoke of his uppermost garment to Brummell, the ‘exquisite,’ laying his finger upon the collar thereof, said, ‘Do you call this thing a coat?’—and when the News first came out, people held it up between the tips of their forefinger and thumb, and asked each other innocently, ‘Do you call this thing a newspaper?’ Well, after continuing remarkably sickly for some time, and seeing the utter folly of hoping to compete with the established daily newspapers, Bradbury and Evans—dear, kind, worthy souls!—said one morning to each other, ‘This will never do: the public will not be gulled—we must really sell our wares at what they are worth;’—and so down went the price of the News to twopence-halfpenny! ‘Hurrah for the cheap newspaper press!’ vociferated they who now affect to look down with contempt on cheap literature altogether: and forthwith they fetch Mr. Dilk all the way from the Athenæum office in Wellington Street to manage their paper for them. And such management as it has been! Mr. Dilk knows about as much of newspapers in general as he does of courtesy in the Athenæum in particular;—and Bradbury and Evans very soon found that a twopenny-halfpenny daily thing was ‘no go.’ The price is accordingly raised to threepence; and, just to eke out by hook and by crook, the Express is issued as an evening paper, its contents being precisely those of the News, with perhaps half-a-dozen lines of new matter just to make a show under the head of ‘Latest Intelligence.’ Thus has the Daily News been tinkered about in all shapes and ways, with the hope of establishing it on some kind of basis or another;—and, after such a career, it fancies itself to be respectable and influential enough to undertake the duties of Mentor! But it has entrusted the office to a disgusting twaddler who scruples not to season his mawkish composition with diabolical lies, as a make-shift for ‘Attic salt.’ However, enough of this for the present:—we have compelled the News and the Express to acknowledge themselves to be slanderers;—but we are afraid that after all they have got the better of us, inasmuch as they probably provoked us only for the purpose of obtaining a gratuitous advertisement through the medium of any reply which might be made to them in The Miscellany.”—Reynolds’s Miscellany, No. 56.
[9] The readers of the First Series of “The Mysteries of London” will recollect the character of Lady Adeline Enfield in the “History of an Unfortunate Woman.” Lady Caroline Jerningham is drawn expressly in contrast with that heroine,—one of the objects of “The Mysteries of London” being to depict the good and the bad—the generous and the selfish—of all classes of society.
[10] Fact.
[11] Fact. This incident shows how the Ministers of the Established Church will at times unscrupulously set the laws of the land at defiance.
[12] Equivalent to “Miss” in English.
[13] The Industrious classes in Great Britain should take into their serious consideration the ensuing plan, which the operatives in France have submitted to the Provisional Government. The basis of a similar scheme might be established in London; and there are doubtless many persons, possessing the intelligence required for the initiative of the grand work, who would devote a few hours per week, without fee or reward, to the foundation of so glorious an institution. The plan alluded to is conceived as follows; but we have substituted the equivalent sums of English money for the French coins specified in the original document;—
“Petition for a bill to establish a National Pension Fund for every workman that has attained the age of fifty-five years.
“Every citizen of the two sexes from seventeen to fifty-five years of age shall be bound to pay each day one farthing, or 7½d. per month, or 7s. 6d. per annum; every town or village shall be bound to pay for the totality of its inhabitants.
“Every workman employing workmen or servants is bound to keep back this amount from their wages, and is to be considered responsible therefore.