What Englishman Has
Devoted A Room To Books, And Devoted No Portion Of That Room To The
Productions Of America?
But I must say a word of literature in which I shall not speak of it
in its ordinary
Sense, and shall yet speak of it in that sense which
of all, perhaps, in the present day should be considered the most
ordinary; I mean the every-day periodical literature of the press.
Most of those who can read, it is to be hoped, read books; but all
who can read do read newspapers. Newspapers in this country are so
general that men cannot well live without them; but to men and to
women also in the United States they may be said to be the one chief
necessary of life; and yet in the whole length and breadth of the
United States there is not published a single newspaper which seems
to me to be worthy of praise.
A really good newspaper - one excellent at all points - would indeed
be a triumph of honesty and of art. Not only is such a publication
much to be desired in America, but it is still to be desired in
Great Britain also. I used, in my younger days, to think of such a
newspaper as a possible publication, and in a certain degree to look
for it; now I expect it only in my dreams. It should be powerful
without tyranny, popular without triumph, political without party
passion, critical without personal feeling, right in its statements
and just in its judgments, but right and just without pride; it
should be all but omniscient, but not conscious of its omnipotence;
it should be moral, but never strait-laced; it should be well
assured but yet modest; though never humble, it should be free from
boastings. Above all these things it should be readable, and above
that again it should be true. I used to think that such a newspaper
might be produced, but I now sadly acknowledge to myself the fact
that humanity is not capable of any work so divine.
The newspapers of the States generally may not only be said to have
reached none of the virtues here named, but to have fallen into all
the opposite vices. In the first place, they are never true. In
requiring truth from a newspaper the public should not be anxious to
strain at gnats. A statement setting forth that a certain
gooseberry was five inches in circumference, whereas in truth its
girth was only two and a half, would give me no offense. Nor would
I be offended at being told that Lord Derby was appointed to the
premiership, while in truth the Queen had only sent to his lordship,
having as yet come to no definite arrangement. The demand for truth
which may reasonably be made upon a newspaper amounts to this, that
nothing should be stated not believed to be true, and that nothing
should be stated as to which the truth is important without adequate
ground for such belief.
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