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    Untitled Article

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    NOTES ON THE NEWSPAPERS.

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    Untitled Article

    [ In the Notes for last month , during the course of some observations on the display of Tory feeling at the Oxford Commemoration , occurred the following passage : — ' The only remark ( beyond an occasional interjection of contempt ) which we have heard from the lips of any Radical on the affair , was an expression of regret that a place pretending to be the fountain-head of morality and religion , should teach its youth to cheer a Lyndhurst and a "Wynford ; as if the youth of the London University should toss up their hats for Mr . Wakley or Mr . Whittle Harvey . The writer of the Notes is anxious to state , that , from an unlucky concurrence of circumstances , the above passage went through the press without having been seen by the editor ; and the writer himself , on subsequent consideration , feels that he had no right , even when repeating what was actually said by another person , to introduce into a printed discourse the names of individuals in connexion with implied reflections upon their moral characters . On the subject of the imputations , great or small , merited or unmerited , current against any of the four persons mentioned , the writer does not pretend to know any thing but what the public knows : that the imputations existed was all that his argument required , and their existence is so universally notorious , that he did not conceive himself to be adding to their notoriety by his allusion . £ But no one has a right to presume that his words are of no consequence , when they contribute , in

    however slight a degree , to swell a hostile cry against any of his fellowcreatures ; and the present writer , who , on principle , denies that private life is a fit subject to be made amenable through the press to the jurisdiction of the general public , ought not to have lent himself to the execution of the verdict pronounced by so incompetent a tribunal , even had that verdict been ( what in some of these cases it certainly is not , and in none of them does he know it to be ) decided and unanimous . > In fact , it is when the charges against any person become the subject of incidental and cursory allusion—it is then , and not before , that the bulk of mankind , who have given little or no attention to the evidence for the

    charges , conclude them to be proved . A writer who permits himself such allusions , incurs , therefore , a most serious moral responsibility ; and no

    one ought to do so who has not formed his judgment on the case with the care , deliberateness , and solemnity of a judicial act . ] 2 \ st Jv ? ie . The alleged increase of crime . *—It is recorded that King Charles the Second , in one of his merry moods , requested the Royal Society to explain the fact that a fish has no weight when weighed in its own element . The philosophers laid their heads together , and thought of a variety of explanations , but forgot to verify the fact itself , which was a mere invention of the jocular monarch . A similar

    blunder appears to us to have been fallen into by the House of Lords last night , and by many others among those who occupy themselves with public affairs . They are all quarrelling over conflicting theories as to the causes of the increase of crime , and actually debating whether the increase is caused by education ! forgetting , meanwhile , to ascertain whether crime has increased . We have never seen or heard of any evidence of increase which appeared to us deserving of the slightest regard . It is astonishing , not only how little pains mankind will take to get at the truth , on matters which are every body ' s concern , and not * This and the following note are those alluded to in ' The Repository' of last month u postponed for want of toom .

    Notes On The Newspapers.

    NOTES ON THE NEWSPAPERS .

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• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1834, page 589, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2636/page/59/