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Untitled Article
United States is , to cut a road to it , and establish a newspaper . The means for the diffusion of intelligence are thus provided , and everything of importance is sure to advance well in spite of agues , arising from breaking up new lands , which should rather be called old , seeing that they have been so many years untouched . The newspapers of a free country really spread intelligence , and that very rapidly ; but
the newspapers of England , highly taxed , are thereby a monopoly to their owners , and really prevent intelligence . They give , it is true , the details of what is passing in the world , but with the exception of one or two , they merely echo the leading talk of the day ; and instead of being leading journals , as some of them call themselves , that is to say , leading the public to the right , and warning them against the wrong , they pander to the popular cry , because by that means they increase the number of their customers , and thereby enlarge their
profits . They are mercantile speculations , in short , and literary men are hired to write for them , just as a vender of gin employs working distillers . The proprietors of one of the principal journals , on one occasion , decided by vote which side of a great public question should be taken , and the hireling scribe , equally ready to write on either side , received his orders from the majority . It is clear that there could only be a right and a wrong course . The reasoning process is an infallible guide to the right , yet all reason was abandoned , and the matter was
settled by a process very similar to that of settling , by a vote of bricklayers' labourers , what should be the shape of a building . Yet such publications as these are called the teachers of the people . Philosophicminded people , really capable of teaching the public at large , are shut out from the channel of newspapers , because they are rarely wealthy people ; and to establish a newspaper requires a large capital , on account of the duties which are to be paid to government . Thus the purely mercantile newspapers maintain by wealth a monopoly which
they would not be able to maintain by talent . One newspaper only—The Examiner—takes pains to expose this iniquity . The newspapers could be sold at less-than half price were it not for the duties ; but as the taking off the duties will throw the trade open , those who enjoy the monopoly prefer it as it is . Were the trade thrown open a great part of the daily press would probably really become vehicles of public instruction , instead of mere caterers for public amusement . At present they are almost mischievous , for they retard public improvement , beincf , instead of honest censors , generally the sycophantic
applauders of whatever may be the system of the time being , praisers of the " wisdom of our ancestors , " and resisters of all improvement , till the voice of the majority of the public forces it upon them . They are the barrers-out of better men ; and their only opponents are a species of half desperate political adventurers , some of whom from ignorance , and others from desire of profit , run all risks of government prosecution , and pander to the passions of the poorest classes , just as the * ' respectable part of the press" panders to the middle classes/—* p . 68—72 .
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Critical Notices—^ -Political Economy and Legislation . l 4 t
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1832, page 141, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1806/page/69/
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