The daring controversialist and uncompromising fighter did not foresee that the Press, far from neutralising itself through its numbers, would, later on, create a State within a State, developed to such an extent, and so imbued with disintegrating principles, that it would become as dangerous to social groups as to individuals.
I shall be told that, since its very modest beginnings, in the time of Louis XIV., the Press was as formidable under the Revolution as later, and that all governments suffered through it. But I reply that in former times the journalist, in spite of many excesses, held his calling sacred, and that his exercise of it found an excuse in his talent and sincerity. It was a time when men of strong opinions fought beneath the same flag; in our own day we often see men pass from one side to the other and defend by turns diametrically opposite views.
In the critic’s domain, for instance, it was esteemed an honour to show oneself possessed of a sense of the beautiful. Men like Théophile Gautier, Sainte-Beuve, Paul de Saint-Victor, spared not their personal preferences to pay homage to talent, no matter whence it came.
Art was the first object with spirits like these. To-day, mere talkers, with some dubious interest at their back, are willing to boom any mediocrity who makes it worth their while. Everything is done with an eye to expediency. The independent artist is regarded as an enemy because he will not condescend to pay the paper’s price for praise and puffery. It is the same in politics; and whosoever, in commerce or industry, fails to sacrifice to the omnipotent god of advertisement, finds himself checkmated by rivals pushed forward at a great expenditure of bank-notes.
It comes about then that, in a free state, a privileged class, generally recruited from amongst the quasi-intellectual of the “flash-in-the-pan” type, is able to place itself above the law because, in many cases, slander is—or so it appears—a means of instructing or amusing the public.
Not long ago, when the Press was censored, people cried out at the abuse of power; but when it was given freedom to express even destructive opinions, it hastened to turn this freedom into licence. And, in fact, to-day the evil has become so great, through the falsity and baseness of the subject-matter, that the least well-informed reader, seldom though he may look at a paper, knows beforehand the stuff that will be served up to him, whether as regards politics, art, science, or the small change of public scandals.
The intrusion of advertisement, too, is such that the man whose article is published is often the one who pays. In this way, the Lie, in a thousand different forms, is retailed every hour of the day to the poor deluded reading public.
In order that the Press may fill the rôle of educator of the people, leader of the masses, it must adhere to a political, social, and moral ideal, frankly sincere, and with a personal sense of the beautiful.
The opinions of honest, enlightened minds, freed from the snare of time-serving, would be offered to society, instead of such as corrupt individual aspirations or bring a ferment of confusion into the different social spheres.
But, to make that possible, every newspaper should be, first of all, an enterprise possessing considerable capital, supplied by independent shareholders, uncompromising, honourable men, whose fortune would be an element making for success.