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Untitled Article
What we would point attention to is , its inherent Vulgarity . There has been some discussion whether the House of Commons has become less gentlemanly in its composition since it has been said to be reformed . This we cannot presume to decide : but , gentlemanly or not , a more essentially vulgar assembly than it is and was , both before and since , we sometimes think could scarcely be found in Europe .
17 th February . —The Leeds Election . —The liberal papers are exulting in the success of the liberal candidate , Mr . Baines , yet they all overlook what forms in our view the chief importance of the victory . If Mr . Baines had been a Tory , we should still have hailed as one of the greatest triumphs hitherto achieved by liberal principles , the return to Parliament of a man who has gained all
his reputation and his success in life as editor of a newspaper . It is time that the ostensible power should be where the real power is , and that those who have long , by persuasion or by compulsion , dictated to the Legislature what laws it should make , should no longer be thought unfit themselves to take a direct part in making those laws .
The social position of the newspaper press in this country is altogether anomalous . In all the circumstances by which we arc surrounded there is no more striking indication of a society in a state of moral revolution . If there be a law in human affairs which seems universal , it is , that the respect of mankind follows power , in whatsoever hands residing . In England ,
however , the scat of power has changed , and the respect of mankind has not yet found its way to the new disposers of their destiny . Nobody denies that the newspapers govern the country ; hitherto ( it . is true ) much more by making" themselves the organs ot opinion already formed , than by influencing its formation ; yet to an immense extent in both modes . To mention a striking
example , we affirm without fear of contradiction from any one who has watched the progress of opinion , that Mr . Black , the Editor of the ' Morning Chronicle , ' has been the great proximate cause of the law reforms now in progress , and of the downfal of
that superstition which formerly protected the vices of the courts of law and of the magistracy from the denunciations of opinion and the controlling hand of the legislator . Sir Robert Peel first , and Lord Brougham afterwards , have only reaped the harvest which he had sown . Allowing , however , that the newspaper press is but an instrument , and not an independent agent , the two Houses of Parliament , have for many years renounced all pretension to being anything but the more or less reluctant instruments of that instrument . Yet , a year or two ago , even Radicals would have turned away from the proposition of returning a newspaper editor to Parliament ; because newspaper editors , as a class , have only talents , and have not rank or fortune , l ^ v en now , we are con-
Untitled Article
Iti Notes on the Newspapers .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 172, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/12/
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