We do not, as our readers know, set
up to be champions of the press, and have certainly never shown any
disposition to underrate its defects or shortcomings. But there is
one thing which no candid and careful observer can avoid seeing,
and that is that the press of the country, as an instrument of
discussion and popular education, has undergone within twenty years
an improvement nothing analogous to which is to be found in the
class of politicians. The newspapers are now, in the vast majority
of cases in all our leading cities, conducted by men who are
familiar with the leading ideas of our time and with the latest
advances in science and the art, including the art of government,
and who write under the influence of these ideas and these advances,
and who have consequently got a standard of efficiency in
legislative administration which has not yet made its way into the
political class. The result is that, after making all possible
allowance for the carelessness and recklessness and dishonesty of
reporters, and the personal biases and enmities of editors, the men
who carry on the Government, excepting a few experts, have become
objects of criticism on the part of the daily press, the
depreciatory tone of which is not wholly unjustifiable or unnatural,
and politicians repay this contempt with a hatred which is none the
less fierce for having no adequate means of expression.
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