I shall conclude this subject with quoting part of a letter of my Father’s on the subject of The Courier, to which Mr. Stuart, to whom it was addressed, declares himself to have replied, that “as long as he actively interfered, the Paper was conducted on the independent principles alluded to by Coleridge,” but that, for reasons which he states, he found it best, from the year 1811, to “leave Street entirely to his own course;” and “so it gradually slid into a mere ministerial journal—an instrument of the Treasury:” “acquired a high character for being the organ of Government, and obtained a great circulation; but became odious to the mob—excited by the falsehoods of the weekly journals.”
Letter 151. To Stuart[39]
Wednesday, 8th May, 1816.
Highgate.
My dear Stuart,
Since you left me, I have been reflecting a great deal on the subject of the Catholic question, and somewhat on The Courier in general. With all my weight of faults, (and no one is less likely to underrate them than myself), a tendency to be influenced by selfish motives in my friendships, or even in the cultivation of my acquaintance, will not, I am sure, be by you placed among them. When we first knew each other, it was perhaps the most interesting period of both our lives, at the very turn of the flood; and I can never cease to reflect with affectionate delight on the steadiness and independence of your conduct and principles, and how, for so many years, with little assistance from others, and with one main guide, a sympathizing tact for the real sense, feeling, and impulses of the respectable part of the English nation, you went on so auspiciously, and likewise so effectively. It is far, very far, from being an hyperbole to affirm, that you did more against the French scheme of Continental domination than the Duke of Wellington has done; or rather, Wellington could neither have been supplied by the Ministers, nor the Ministers supported by the nation, but for the tone first given, and then constantly kept up by the plain, un-ministerial, anti-opposition, anti-Jacobin, anti-Gallican, anti-Napoleon spirit of your writings, aided by a colloquial style and evident good sense, in which, as acting on an immense mass of knowledge of existing men and existing circumstances, you are superior to any man I ever met with in my life-time. Indeed you are the only human being, of whom I can say with severe truth, that I never conversed with you for an hour without rememberable instruction; and with the same simplicity I dare affirm my belief, that my greater knowledge of man has been useful to you, though, from the nature of things, not so useful as your knowledge of men has been to me.
Now, with such convictions, my dear Stuart, how is it possible that I can look back on the conduct of The Courier, from the period of the Duke of York’s restoration, without some pain? You cannot be seriously offended or affronted with me, if, in this deep confidence and in a letter, which, or its contents, can meet no eye but your own, I venture to declare, that though since then much has been done, very much of high utility to the country, by and under Mr. Street, yet The Courier itself has gradually lost that sanctifying spirit which was the life of its life, and without which, even the best and soundest principles lose half their effect on the human mind; I mean, the faith in the faith of the person and paper which brings them forward. They are attributed to the accident of their happening to be for such a side, or for such a party. In short, there is no longer any root in the paper, out of which all the various branches and fruits, and even fluttering leaves, are seen or believed to grow. But it is the old tree, barked round above the root, though the circular decortication is so small and so neatly filled up and coloured as to be scarcely visible but in its effects, excellent fruit still hanging on the boughs, but they are tied on by threads and hairs.
In all this I am well aware, that you are no otherwise to be blamed than in permitting that which without disturbance to your heart and tranquillity, you could not, perhaps, have prevented or effectively modified. But the whole plan of Street seems to me to have been motiveless from the beginning, or at least affected by the grossest miscalculations, in respect even of pecuniary interests. For, had the paper maintained and asserted not only its independence, but its appearance of it;—it is true that Mr. Street might not have had Mr. A. to dine with him, or received as many nods and shakes of the hand from Lord this or that; but at least equally true, that the ministry would have been far more effectively served, and that (I speak from facts), both the paper and its conductor would have been held by the adherents of ministers in far higher respect; and after all, ministers do not love newspapers in their hearts, not even those that support them; indeed it seems epidemic among Parliament men in general to affect to look down upon and despise newspapers, to which they owe 999/1000 of their influence and character, and at least 3/5ths of their knowledge and phraseology. Enough! burn the letter, and forgive the writer, for the purity and affectionateness of his motive.”—Quoted from the Gentleman’s Magazine of June, 1838.[40]
One other point connected with Mr. C.’s writings for public journals I must advert to before concluding this chapter. Mr. Cottle finds want of memory in some part of the narrative, contained in this work, respecting the publication of The Watchman; it is as well to let him tell the story in his own way, which he does as follows. “The plain fact is, I purchased the whole of the paper for The Watchman, allowing Mr. C. to have it at prime cost, and receiving small sums from Mr. C. occasionally, in liquidation. I became responsible, also, with Mr. B. for printing the work, by which means, I reduced the price per sheet, as a bookseller (1000), from fifty shillings to thirty-five shillings. Mr. C. paid me for the paper in fractions, as he found it convenient, but from the imperfection of Mr. Coleridge’s own receipts I never received the whole. It was a losing concern altogether, and I was willing, and did bear, uncomplaining, my portion of the loss. There is some difference between this statement, and that of Mr. Coleridge, in his Biographia Literaria. A defect of memory must have existed, arising out of the lapse of twenty-two years; but my notices, made at the time, did not admit of mistake. There were but twenty sheets in the whole ten numbers of The Watchman, which, at thirty-five shillings per sheet, came to only thirty-five pounds. The paper amounted to much more than the printing.
“I cannot refrain from observing further, that my loss was augmented from another cause. Mr. C. states in the above work, that his London publisher never paid him ‘one farthing,’ but ‘set him at defiance.’ I also was more than his equal companion in this misfortune. The thirty copies of Mr. C.’s poems, and the six ‘Joans of Arc’ (referred to in the preceding letter)[41] found a ready sale, by this said ‘indefatigable London publisher,’ and large and fresh orders were received, so that Mr. Coleridge and myself successively participated in two very opposite sets of feeling; the one of exultation that our publications had found so good a sale; and the other of depression, that the time of payment never arrived!”