A philosophical and authentic history of the newspaper would, however, not only yield the most genuine insight as to public events and the spirit of the age, it would also reveal the most exalted and the lowest traits of humanity. The cowardly hireling who stabs reputations—as the bravo of the middle ages did hearts—for a bribe; and the heroic defender of truth and advocate of reform, loyal with his pen to honest conviction amid the wiles of corruption and the ignominy of abuse—in a word, the holy champion and the base lampooner are both represented in this field. It is one of the conditions of its freedom, that equal rights shall be accorded all; and the wisest men have deemed the possible evils of such latitude more than compensated by the probable good. Perhaps our own country affords the best opportunity to judge this question; and here we cannot but perceive that private judgment continually modifies the influence of the press. We speak habitually of each newspaper as the organ of its editor; and the opinion it advances has precisely as much weight with intelligent readers as the individual is entitled to, and no more. The days when the cabalistic ‘we’ inspired awe have passed away; the venom of a scurrilous print, and the ferocity of a partisan one, only provoke a smile; newspapers here, instead of guiding, follow public opinion; and they have created, by free discussion, an independent habit of thought on the part of their readers, which renders their influence harmless when not useful. Yet the abuses of journalism were so patent and pernicious thirty years ago, that Hillhouse thus entered his wise protest against the growing evil: ‘Many of our faults, much of our danger, are chargeable to a reckless press. No institutions or principles are spared its empiric handling. The most sacred maxims of jurisprudence, the most unblemished public characters, the vital points of constitutional policy and safety, are dragged into discussion and exposed to scorn by presumptuous scribblers, from end to end of the nation.’ Printers originally issued gazettes, and depended upon contributions for a discussion of public affairs—news whereof they alone furnished: gradually arose the editor; and two conditions soon became apparent as essential to his success—prompt utterance of opinion, and constant reannouncement and advocacy thereof. Cobbett declared the genius of journalism to consist in re-iteration, upon which distinction a witty editor improved by substituting re-irritation.
As a political element, journalism has entirely changed the position of statesmen, and seems destined to subvert the secret machinery of diplomacy. These results grow out of the enlightenment and circulation of thought on national questions induced by their constant public discussion by the press; their tendency is to break up monopolies of information, to scatter the knowledge of facts, and openly recognize great human interests. By condensing the mists of popular feeling into clear and powerful streams, or shooting them into luminous crystals, the judgment, the sympathies, and the will of mankind are gradually modified. Hence, all who represent the people are acted upon as they never could have been when authority was less exposed to criticism, and the means of a mutual understanding and comparison of ideas among men less organized and effective. It has been justly observed that no danger can result from the most seductive ‘leader’ on a public question, while the same sheet contains a full report of all the facts relating to it. The pamphlet and gazette of Addison’s day, and earlier, are now combined in the newspaper. In great exigencies, however, the immediate promulgation of facts may be a serious national peril. An experienced American editor, and careful observer of the phenomena of the Rebellion, thus emphatically testifies to the possible evil of an enterprising press: ‘I believe most strongly now, that this Rebellion would have been subdued ere this, if, at the outbreak, the Government had suppressed every daily newspaper which contained a line or a word upon the war question, except to give the results of engagements. Our daily journals have kept the Confederates minutely and seasonably informed. The greater the vigilance and accuracy of these journals, the greater their value to the enemy.’ But a more significant result than this may be found in the test which the Rebellion has proved, not only to social and national, but to professional life, and especially the editorial. How completely has the prestige of newspapers as organs of opinion faded away before the facts of the hour! What poor prophets, reasoners, historical scholars, patriots, and men, have some of the conductors of the press proved! With what distrust is it now regarded; and how does public confidence refuse any nucleus but that of individual character. The press, therefore, as a popular organ, is unrivalled. It now illustrates every phase, both of reform and conservatism, every religious doctrine, scientific interest, and social tendency. Take up at random any popular newspaper of the day, and what a variety of subjects and scope of vision it covers, superficially indeed, but to the philosophic mind none the less significantly; the world is therein pictured in miniature—the world of to-day.
Probably the most universal charm of a newspaper is the gratification it affords to what phrenologists call the organ of eventuality. Curiosity is a trait of human nature which belongs to every order of mind, and actuates the infant as well as the sage. To its more common manifestations the newspaper appeals, and indeed originated in this natural craving for incident. In its most sympathetic degree, this feeling is the source of the profound interest which tragedy inspires, and its lower range is the occasion of that pleasure which gossip yields. It is a curious fact that the same propensity should be at once the cause of the noblest and the meanest exhibitions of character; yet the poetic impulse and reverent inquiry of the highest scientific intelligence—intent upon exploring the wonders of the universe—is but the exalted and ultimate development of this love of the new and desire to penetrate the unknown. The everlasting inquiry for news, which meets us in the street, at the hearthstone, and even beside the bier and in the church, constantly evinces this universal passion. How often does that commonplace question harshly salute the ear of the reflective; what a satire it is upon the glory of the past; how it baffles sentiment, chills enthusiasm, and checks earnestness! The avidity with which fresh intelligence, although of no personal concern, is seized, the eagerness with which it is circulated, and the rapidity with which it is forgotten, are more significant of the transitory conditions of human life than the data of the calendar or the ruins of Balbek. They prove that we live altogether in the immediate, that our dearest associations may be invaded by the most trivial occurrence, that the mental acquisitions of years do not invalidate a childish love of amusement, and that the mere impertinences of external life have a stronger hold upon our nature than the deepest mysteries of consciousness. ‘It seems,’ wrote Fisher Ames, ‘as if newspaper wares were made to suit a market as much as any other. The starers, and wonderers, and gapers engross a very large share of the attention of all the sons of the type. I pray the whole honourable craft to banish as many murders, and horrid accidents, and monstrous births, and prodigies from their gazettes, by degrees, as their readers will permit; and, by degrees, coax them back to contemplate life and manners, to consider events with some common sense, and to study Nature where she can be known.’ On the other hand, this curiosity about what does not concern us, is undoubtedly linked with the more generous sympathies, and is, in a degree, prompted by them; so that philanthropy, good fellowship, and the amenities of social life and benevolent enterprise, are more or less the result of the natural interest we feel in the affairs of nations and those of our neighbour. If the newspaper, therefore, considered merely as a vehicle of general information in regard to passing events, has a tendency to diffuse and render fragmentary our mental life; on the other hand, it keeps the attention fixed upon something besides self, it directs the gaze beyond a narrow circle, and brings home to the heart a sense of universal laws, natural affinities, and progressive interests. But curiosity is not altogether a disinterested passion; and it is amusing to see how newspapers act upon the idiosyncrasy or the interest of readers. The broker unfolds the damp sheet at the stock column; the merchant turns at once to the ship-news; the spinster first reads the marriages; the politician, legislative debates; and the author, literary criticisms; while lovers of the marvellous, like Abernethy’s patient, enjoy the murders. To how many human propensities does the newspaper thus casually minister! Old gentlemen are, indeed, excusable for losing their temper on a cold morning, when kept waiting for a look into the paper by some spelling reader; and, to a benign observer, the comfort of some poor frequenter of a coffee-house oracularly dispensing his gleanings from the journals, is pleasant to consider,—a cheap and harmless gratification, an inoffensive and solacing phase of self-importance. We can easily imagine the anxious expectancy with which the visitors at a gentleman’s country-seat in England, before the epoch of journals, awaited the news-letter from town,—destined to pass from house to house, through an isolated neighbourhood, and almost worn out in the process of thumbing.
Three traditions exist to account for the origin of newspapers. The first attributes their introduction to the custom prevalent at Venice, about the middle of the fifteenth century, of reading the written intelligence received from the seat of war, then waging by the Republic against Solyman the Second, in Dalmatia, at a fixed time and place, for the benefit of all who chose to hear. French annalists, on the other hand, trace the great invention to a gossiping medical practitioner of Paris, who used to cheer his patients with all the news he could gather, and, to save time, had it written out, at intervals, and distributed among them; while an English historian, quoted by Disraeli the elder, says, ‘they commenced at the epoch of the Spanish Armada; and that we are indebted to the wisdom of Elizabeth and the prudence of Burleigh for the first newspaper.’[33] The same authority conjectures that the word gazette is derived from gazzerótta, a magpie, but it is usually ascribed to gazet, a small coin,—the original price of a copy in Venice. One of the most startling relics of Pompeii is the poster advertising gladiators. The oldest newspaper in the world, according to L’Imprimière, is published at Pekin. It is printed on silk, and has appeared every week for a thousand years. Whatever the actual origin, however, it is natural to suppose that a gradual transition from oral to written, and thence to printed news, was the process by which the modern journal advanced towards its present completeness. It is remarkable that the retrograde movement essential to despotism in all interests, is obvious in the newspaper;—censorship driving free minds from written expression, as in the recent instance of Kossuth when advocating Hungarian progress.
A rigid and complete analytical history of the newspaper would perhaps afford the best illustration of the social and civic development of the civilized world. Commencing with a mere official announcement of national events, such as the ancient Romans daily promulgated in writing, we find the next precursor of the public journal in that systematic correspondence of the scholars of the middle ages, whereby erudite, philosophical, or æsthetic ideas were regularly interchanged and diffused. From this to the written circular, distributed among the English aristocracy, the transition was a natural result of economical and social necessity; and the historian of the subject in Great Britain finds in the popularity of the ballad a still further development of the same instinct and want expressing itself among the people. As their vital interest in civic questions enlarged, pamphlets began to be written and circulated on the current topics of the day; then a periodical sheet was issued containing foreign intelligence, among the earliest specimens whereof is, The Weekly Newes from Italy and Germanie, which first appeared in 1622. It is a characteristic fact that the first two special newspaper organs that were published in England were devoted to sporting[34] and medical intelligence. But it was reserved for the last century to expand these germinal experiments into what we now justly consider a great civilizing institution. When Burke[35] began to apply philosophy to politics, and Junius to set the example of memorable anonymous writing on public questions, and Wilkes to battle for the liberty of the press, new and powerful intellectual and moral elements were infused into journalism; to these, vast mechanical improvements gave new diffusion; discussion gave birth to systems, invention to new industrial interests, social culture to original phases and forms of popular literary taste and talent. In England, Hazlitt’s psychological criticisms, Jerrold’s local wit, Thackeray’s incisive satire, the descriptive talent of scores of travelling reporters, and the dramatic genius of such observers as Charles Dickens, blended their versatile attractions with the vivid chronicle of daily news and the elaborate treatise of political essayists; while in France, from Rousseau, Grimm, and Mirabeau, to Thiers and St. Beuve, the journal represented the sternest political and the most finished literary ability; from the old Journal Etranger, devoted to scandal, to Marat’s Ami du Peuple, the vicissitudes and the genius of France are enrolled in her journalism.
The French papers have the largest subscription, those of London the most complete establishments, and in America they are far more numerous than in other countries; over three thousand are now published, and their price is about one-seventh that of the English. The tone of the American press is usually less dignified and intellectual than that of France and England. It has also the peculiarity of being maintained, in a great degree, by advertisements; thus the commercial as well as the party element—both dangerous to the elevation of the press—enter largely into its character here. It has been said of penny-a-liners that they are to the newspaper corps what Cossacks are to a regular army; and the activity of journalism in Great Britain, and the detail of its enterprise, are signally evidenced by such a class of writers, as well by the fact that in 1826, when Canning sent British troops to Portugal, newspaper reporters went with the army—a custom which in the Crimean, East India, and recent American war, has given birth to such memorable correspondence. The shipping intelligence of United States journals is more minute, the philosophical eloquence of those of Paris more striking, and the details of court gossip and criminal jurisprudence more full in those of London,—characteristics which respectively mirror national traits and the existent state of society in each latitude. The shareholders of the London Times have occasionally divided a net profit of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds—the well-earned recompense for the complete arrangement and efficient exercise of this greatest of modern instruments. It is not surprising that the most renowned of writers have availed themselves of a medium so direct and universal. Chateaubriand wrote in the Journal des Débats against Polignac; Malte-Brun contributed geographical articles to the same print; Benjamin Constant’s views were unfolded in the Minerve Française; Lafitte’s opinions found expression in the Journal du Commerce. Lamartine’s ideal of a journal is one which has ‘assez de raison pour convenir aux hommes sérieux, assez de témerité pour plaire aux hommes légeres, assez d’excentricité pour plaire aux aventereux.’ With all the restrictions to which despotism in France has subjected the press, its history as a whole is as Protean as Paris life, and reflects the tendencies of national character. As early as 1650, there was a Gazette de Burlesque, soon after a Mercury Galant; the Journal des Débats is devoted to facts and its own dignity, the Siècle represents mercantile interests, La Presse is full of ideas, and has been well described as partaking of the nature of a torrent which ‘se grossit par la resistance.’[36] Napoleon depended on the Moniteur, and kept the press low because he feared its influence more than an army. The proprietors of the Constitutionel often pay a hundred and fifty francs for a single column. William Livingston wrote effectively, in 1752, in the Independent Reflector, of New York, against Episcopal encroachments. Freedom of the press, in America, was established by the trial of the printer Zenger. Kossuth was a journalist while at the head of a nation. Cavour began his public career in the same capacity, and Heine was the admirable correspondent of leading German journals for many years. Centralization vastly increases the influence of journalism in Paris, and its history there is a perfect index of the successive revolutions. From Benjamin Franklin to Walter Savage Landor, and from Junius to Jack Downing, these vehicles of ideas have enshrined memorable individualities as well as phases of general opinion. Jefferson, Hamilton, Rufus King, De Witt Clinton, and Everett—all our statesmen—have been newspaper writers.
Specimens of recorded thought from the earliest to the present time would aptly mark the history of civilization; the writings on stone, wax, bones, lead, palm-leaves, bark, linen, and parchment—inscribed by patient manual toil, denoting the era when knowledge was a mystery and its possessor a seer; illuminated chronicles and missals representing its cloistered years;—black-letter, the transition period when it began to expand, although still a luxury; and the newspaper, illustrating its modern diffusion and universality. The scribe’s vocation was at once superseded by the invention of printing, and the scholar’s monopoly broken up; hence the scarcity and value of books prior to the times of Faust and Caxton, can scarcely be appreciated by this generation. Wonderful indeed is the contrast to the American traveller, as he muses beside the Anapus at Syracuse, over the papyrus vegetating in its waters,—between the scrolls of antiquity engrossed on this material, and the twenty thousand closely-printed sheets thrown off in an hour by one of the mammoth daily presses of his native country. This rapidity of production, however, is almost as oblivious in its tendency as the limited copies produced by the pen and transmitted in manuscript. It may be said of exclusive newspaper writers and readers, with a few memorable exceptions, that their intellectual triumphs are ‘writ in water;’ and melancholy is that fate which condemns a man of real genius to the labours of a newspaper editor; fragmentary and fugitive, though incessant, are his labours,—usually destructive of style, and without permanent memorials; when of a political nature, they often enlist bitter feelings and promote a knowledge of the world calculated to indurate as well as expand the mind. A veteran French writer for the press describes the editor’s life as always ‘troublée et militante.’ An American poet,[37] whose divine art is a safeguard against the worst evils of journalism, in a recent history of his paper, thus speaks of the influence of the employment upon character:—
‘It is a vocation which gives an insight into men’s motives, and reveals by what influences masses of men are moved, but it shows the dark, rather than the bright side of human nature; and one who is not disposed to make due allowances for the peculiar circumstances in which he is placed, is apt to be led by it into the mistake, that the large majority of mankind are knaves. It fills the mind with a variety of knowledge relating to the events of the day, but that knowledge is apt to be superficial; since the necessity of attending to many subjects prevents the journalist from thoroughly investigating any. In this way it begets desultory habits of thought, disposing the mind to be satisfied with mere glances at difficult questions, and to delight in passing lightly from one thing to another. The style gains in clearness and fluency, but is apt to become, in consequence of much and hasty writing, loose, diffuse, and stuffed with local barbarisms and the cant phrases of the day. Its worst effect is the strong temptation which it sets before men to betray the cause of truth to public opinion, and to fall in with what are supposed to be the views held by a contemporaneous majority, which are sometimes perfectly right and sometimes grossly wrong.’
In regard to the influence of newspapers on style, it has been noted that since their cheap issue, colloquial simplicity has vanished. ‘A single number of a London morning paper,’ observes a writer in Blackwood ‘(which, in half a century, has expanded from the size of a dinner napkin to that of a breakfast tablecloth, from that to a carpet, and will soon be forced by the expansion of public business into something resembling the mainsail of a frigate), already is equal in printed matter to a very large octavo volume. Every old woman in the nation now reads daily a vast miscellany, in one volume royal octavo; thus the whole artificial dialect of books has come into play as the dialect of ordinary life. This is one form of the evil impressed upon style by journalism; a dire monotony of bookish idiom has stiffened all freedom of expression.’[38] As to its effect on the morale, when pursued exclusively as a material interest, one of the most acute and observant of modern French writers says:—‘Le journal, au lieu d’être un sacerdoce, est devenu un moyen pour les partis; de moyen, il s’est fait commerce; et comme tous les commerces, il est sans foi ni loi;’ and in allusion to the French, bitterly adds, ‘nous verrons les journaux, dirigés d’abord par des hommes d’honneur, tomber plus tard sous le gouvernement de plus médiocre, qui auront la patience et lâcheté de gomme elastique qui manquent aux beaux genies, ou à des epiciers qui auront de l’argent pour acheter des plumes.’ Macaulay, says a French critic, ‘a conservé dans l’histoire, les habitudes qu’ il avait gagnées dans les journaux.’ Journalism has proved an effective discipline for statesmen; the late prime minister of Sardinia first dealt with public questions in the columns of a political journal.
But whatever facility of expression and tact in the popular exposition of political science may be acquired by the statesman or annalist, in the practice of journalism, there is no doubt that the worst perversions of ‘English undefiled’ have originated in, and been confirmed by, newspapers. On this subject, an American writer, at once philosophical, erudite, and liberal, who has treated of the history and influence of the English language with remarkable insight and eloquence, emphatically testifies to the verbal corruptions and consequent moral degradation of the newspaper press. ‘The dialect of personal vituperation,’ says Marsh, ‘the rhetoric of malice in all its modifications, the Billingsgate of vulgar hate, the art of damning with faint praise, the sneer of contemptuous irony, have been sedulously cultivated; and, combined with a certain flippancy of expression and ready command of a tolerably extensive vocabulary, are enough to make the fortune of any sharp, shallow, and unprincipled journalist who is content with the fame and the pelf.’