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    15 a road to public dignities ; a career by which a man who is suitably endowed by nature and education , rises to a position from which he might at his pleasure be a deputy or a minister , if he were not conscious of being already much more than a deputy , or even than a minister : and as men , previously unknown , may and continually do rise to eminence by this profession , so do men already eminent avowedly engage in it , without any other feeling

    than that they are raising , not lowering , their personal importance and rank . Now , I request it of you , show this which I have just written to any English friend , and hear what he will say . If I were to publish it to all England , I doubt if there would be found a hundred persons in the whole country who would not utterly disbelieve the statement . Englishmen cannot conceive that journalism can be anything but a rather low and disreputable trade . No man of any rank or station in society likes it to be known or

    suspected that he has anything to do with a newspaper . In France there are editors of daily journals , any one of whom may be considered as individually the head , or at lowest the right hand , of a political party : in England no journalist , however popular , is esteemed anything higher than the powerful and formidable but rather dangerous and disagreeable sting in its tail .

    Like all despised classes , they , for the most part , merit their fate . A man of talents condemned to disrespect , generally becomes deserving of it ; and makes his talents profitable to himself in such ways as are left open to him . not restrained bv the

    fear of forfeiting the consideration he cannot look to have . In France a journalist of eminent talents , like a deputy of eminent talents , may at the worst have it presumed that the seductions to which he yields are those of a lofty ambition : but if an English journalist is unprincipled , the interest which actuates him is of the most grovelling' sort : mere gain . A journalist in England is considered as an adventurer : and in most instances the

    estimation is just . There are honourable exceptions : men more hi ghminded , disinterested , and patriotic , than some editors of English newspapers , are not to be met with . But they are not sufficientl y numerous to redeem the character of their class . Its reputation they could not redeem if they were five times as numerous . For in England every one who takes part in politics , and who is poor ,

    is presumed to be an adventurer : and in England every one is considered poor who is not rich . In England there is some faith in that kind of public virtue which consists in not being corrupted , but none whatever in that kind which makes the public concerns its own , and devotes its life to them : consequently , if a man appears to make politics his occupation , unless he is already extremely rich , it is always taken for granted that his object is merel y to get money . However great the power exercised in England by the pressand it is a constantly increasing power—there must be a thorough

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    The Journal des Debats and the English . 393

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1834, page 393, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2634/page/9/