Gentlemen, I am desirous you should notice this amended Act, under which Parishes can take a vote, provides not only for Libraries and Museums, but also for News Rooms, and that the general management is vested in Ratepayers, “not less than Three nor more than Nine,” appointed by the Vestry, and that one third of such Commissioners go out of office yearly—I hope the Vestry will not select the nine from their own body, but will appoint at least four Ratepayers who are NOT Vestrymen.
A local paper, prone to balderdash and babblement, noted for its rigmarole, loose, hyperbolical language, indulges in a jeremiad about the want of a Museum. It seems, according to this mendacious journal, that the great hardship of walking from Lisson Grove, or the district of St. Mary to the British Museum in Great Russell Street, or to Kensington is “desolating hearts that might be bright,” and that setting up a Museum in the wastes of Marylebone by “Government friendship,” or expense, is
“unhappily a universal want; a want that private enterprise cannot meet,”
and then with some insolent rant about Prince Albert, and
“the evil tendencies of our Parish Senators,”
this low class Marylebone Mercury advises a run on the British Museum Natural History collection, and so
“preventing our neighbours from ABSORBING all that is to be had.”
Well for the consolation of this miserable, mean print, and the languishing and desolate in heart, pining for a “splendid museum at somebody else’s expense,” I would prescribe the procuring the Libraries’ Act for “promoting the establishment of Free Public Libraries and Museums in Parishes.” If a Museum is a “want” in this Parish, which, with the proximity of the National Collection and Kensington Museum, I deny; you have only to adopt the Act. But I earnestly recommend the not attempting too much at once. Lending Libraries and News Rooms are the great want, and NOT Museums. Why will Mr. Roupell, M.P., in advocating a South London Museum persist in IGNORING Mr. Ewart’s Museum’s Act? Why this anxiety to rob the National Museum? Why this whining for government aid? Adopt the Libraries Act, if you really require a Museum for South London; but you want News Rooms open to all comers, not Museums.
And here I am constrained to remark that Penny Journals are not always vehicles of instruction in any sense of the term. I regret there are not a few Editors in this great Metropolis who have a special aptitude for lowering and degrading Journalism. Take up the Daily Telegraph—to talk of the “MORAL tone” of this paper is nothing less than ineffable bosh. Its exaggerated, ethical articles, are nauseous in the extreme. Let me only refer to the case of the “ingenuous” Eugenie Plummer, recently convicted of perjury. With Judaic malevolence the Telegraph from the first displayed great anxiety to criminate Mr. Hatch, who is now acquitted by an impartial Jury. The desire to pander to an impure taste, was only equalled by the base attempt to crush an innocent clergyman, coûte qui coûte; and even after the conviction of the precocious, marble hearted girl, (who deserved a sound flogging as the only punishment she could feel,) this cheap and nasty Print is at its dirty work again in assuming guilt, and asserting that the unfortunate gentleman “did not behave like an innocent man.” [35] Serjeant Shee’s is very dirty money, but this Telegraph’s is worse. It lowers a noble vocation, and sinks it to Pressgangism.
The critic of the Daily Telegraph has a difficult task, for its nauseous, maudlin effusions, when wishing to be mighty fine, have a bewildering effect. Its