The attorney took the half-dozen square pieces of hastily printed paper, yet damp from the press, some of them, which Mr Bales courteously proffered him, and at a glance mastered their contents.
‘Can rascally fabrications like this,’ asked the attorney, in a glow of something like honest indignation, ‘impose upon the veriest gull in Christendom?’
‘Ah!’ answered the unmoved Mr Bales, scrutinising the despatch which his irate client held between his finger and thumb, ‘you mean the rumour about the sale of the six Turkish ironclads to the Russian government? Popular credulity, my dear sir, would swallow more than that. You have overlooked the other telegram, which mentions that Adamapoulos and Nikopolos, the Greek bankers of Galata, have declined to advance to the Porte at twenty per cent. the wherewithal to meet the next coupon of the Debt. That report has more weight with business-men than the nautical one. Will you give me instructions to sell?’
‘No; but to buy!’ rapped out Mr Wilkins, with suddenness. ‘There must come a reaction soon. I’ll take another ten thousand of the Imperial Ottomans. I know what you would say, Bales,’ he added irritably: ‘the cash I left on deposit won’t cover the margin. Here’—and he produced the bank-notes that had fallen to his share in the division of that day—‘are funds, and to spare.’
As the lawyer quitted the stock-broker’s office he muttered between his set teeth: ‘I stand to win; but at anyrate I know of back-play of a safer sort. Sir Sykes Denzil of Carbery, you are a sponge well worth the squeezing!’
SENSATIONAL REPORTING.
Scarcely a week passes in which the newspaper press is not the medium of attracting the attention of the public to a cause célèbre of one kind or another. Crimes of brutal violence, of gross immorality, of wholesale fraud, have been so terribly prevalent of late, that we might almost believe that civilisation and crime are going hand in hand; certainly the horrors of the latter go a considerable way towards neutralising the blessings of the former, and cause us to pause in our self-congratulation upon the progress and enlightenment of the age in which we live. At but too frequent intervals some villain is held up before the public, and becomes, so to speak, fashionable for the period over which his trial extends.
Every class of society provides its recruits now and again for the ranks of the infamous, and no matter to which stratum the criminal belongs, one newspaper or another is sure to be ready to report—with a minuteness which could not be more detailed if it were inspired by personal animosity—every stage and incident of his crime, and if procurable and sufficiently sensational, to supply an epitome of his antecedent career.
When the influence of the press is properly taken into consideration, the responsibility of writing for it is a very serious one. To many thousands even in great centres of human life like London, Liverpool, Glasgow, or Edinburgh, the daily paper is almost the sole intellectual food sought for and within reach; and when we further consider the immense circulation of some of our newspapers, nearly approaching a quarter of a million a day, and when we think that each copy becomes the centre of an ever-increasing circle of information, we may reasonably assert that the penny paper, once held in contempt, is one of the most potent agents for good or evil which our generation possesses; and in proportion to the influence which it exerts, is the necessity of that influence being exerted in a right direction. So far as regards politics, theology, and social problems, each paper may legitimately represent a particular party or sect, and inculcate its particular views; but upon certain broad principles of morality, and as far as regards general rules for the inculcation and protection of public morals, there ought to be no difference of opinion at all.