NEWSPAPER PROPRIETIES.
IT is rather late in the day to be discussing the boundary-line between Decency and Obscurantism, but some of our contempo- raries, and a good many members of Parliament, seem to have very indefinite ideas on the subject ; and in their zeal for the former preach the latter, till, if they are not careful, they will produce a -cynical reaction against both. It is only a few weeks since the worthy Member for the Ayr District of Burghs, in his honest annoy- ance at the plainness with which philanthropic women were dis- cussing the Contagious Diseases' Act, cleared the House of Com- mons of reporters, and so destroyed for the time all hope of a ?reform which, whatever direction it is to take, is admitted to be necessary, and which cannot be carried out until public opinion .has been enlightened by the arguments of responsible statesmen. Mr. Craufurd, of course, was not silly enough to be afraid of the -effect of any speeches on any subject upon the Members of the House of Commons ; he was merely actuated by the old English feeling in favour of obscurantism, the idea that it is better that sexual evil should exist than that it should be publicly discussed before a mixed audience of persons who might but for such discussion have remained ignorant of the whole matter. We suppose Dr. Lush, the Member for Salisbury, would plead the same excuse for a similar exhibition of silliness in a question recently addressed to the Treasury. The successful candidates for the Indian Civil Service are, as all the world knows, the future magistrates of the Presidencies, and, as all the world does not know, but the Civil Service Commissioners do know, begin their apprenticeship to the work of governing as " Assistants," that is, as Police Magis- trates whose orders are subject to an appeal. As there are no other means of setting up any judicial standard in their minds or of giving them any judicial education, they are directed to attend the London Police Courts, where they observe the methods of business, and learn to appreciate the marvellous dexterity, patience, and self-restraint with which the majority of London magistrates—whose position as at once judges and cross-examiners is as exceptionally difficult as their own for the same reasons will be—contrive to elicit an approximation to truth. The value of such training to a young man who has almost on his arrival to perform the same duties among a submissive but litigious people is infinite, more especially as no substitute for it can be found within India itself ; but of course it has this drawback, that the young men have to listen to indelicate cases two years before they would otherwise be listening to them. If it were possible to bring them up in ignorance of all such forms of evil that would be a matter to regret, but as it is not possible, as they have been educated in the classics, have fairly entered the world, and are specially intended to deal with such matters from the Bench, the objection becomes an absurdity, as great an absurdity as the clerical prohibition within the city of Rome of clinical study to men intended for the medical profession. The well-being of mankind is sacrificed to a theory of obscurantism only to be revered so long as it secures that well-being. As a general principle, we incline to think it does help to secure it, that igno- rance may, during certain periods of life, be a positive protection of innocence ; but it is only one mode of protection, and not of such value that greater objects should be sacrificed to it, justice, for example, or general morality, or the right of women, as in the female-doctor controversy, to exercise any honourable profession by which they can earn a living. Its use is to preserve rather a certain bloom of innocence, such as we do still succeed in preserving in Eng- lish girls, than innocence itself, and to be effective it must be made very nearly complete. Wherever, as in the case of all Englishmen trained under the classical system, ignorance must necessarily be but partial, it is wiser to secure purity by other and more efficient guarantees,—guarantees such as protect, for example, the clam which of all others is on such matters the least ignorant,—the better class of the Catholic clergy. Ignorance and the confes- sional cannot co-exist, but by the confession of a cynical public Englishwomen are scarcely more pure than thousands of French country cures.
One or two of our contemporaries, in their zeal for proprieties which on other occasions they do not always observe,—"Azamat Batuk," for instance, dealing very plainly with very hazardous sub- jects, and the Saturday Review not hesitating to criticize very doubtful French novels,—are pushing the theory of obscurantism nearly as far as Mr. Craufurd or as Dr. Lush, protecting delicacy which is only a grace, at the expense of justice, which is a virtue. With their denunciation of quack advertisements we entirely agree, not so much on the score of propriety, for the advertise- ments could be made proper enough, and they themselves adver- tise exposures which are necessarily almost as unclean as the quackeries exposed; but because the advertisements assist scoundrels who live partly by the sale of dirty books, but chiefly by extorting money by threats. If such advertisements could all be prohibited by law, without interference with medicine,—a difficult but not an impossible arrangement—society would be greatly the gainer, though even on this point the journals in question are pushing their argument rather far. It is surely rather Pharisaical to assert that Mr. Grant, being, as he is, a man of deep though erroneous religious convictions, ought not to edit the Advertiser or write in it because a body of persons over whom he has no control and for whom he has no responsibility choose to publish quack adver- tisements. Carry that idea to its logical conclusion, and every member of Parliament who thinks the Contagious Acts immoral, as a great many Members do think, ought to quit that assembly, because by remaining in it he is increasing its moral weight. The principle laid down is, no doubt, very often just ; but there are many sound principles which, if applied in all cases, would surrender the world to the dominion of evil ; and in this very one the doctrine would compel Mr. Grant to give up his fight with his proprietors, and because part of the Advertiser is bad, to surrender the whole to some one avowedly less conscientious than himself. It is, however, not on this point so much as on another that more definiteness would seem to be required. Both the Pall Mall Gazette and the Satur- day Review call with constant reiteration for reticence in reporting
trials, but neither of them defines with any precision what it means by reticence, or sets any intelligible example. The weekly
paper discusses the Contagious Acts with quite sufficient though necessary plainness, and the daily one reports any case about which the public cares to hear, sometimes with cool cynicism abusing itself in the next column for so acting. Are the journals simply to exclude everything which, under the present system of education, we had rather girls did not read? That demand would be perfectly intelligible, and such a scheme could be defended by very many strong arguments, but then the exclusion should be absolute and complete. What is called con- densed reporting is frequently the cause of the most intolerable injustice. Only a few weeks ago a young lady was mixed up in a divorce case in a manner which would have been absolute ruin to any woman, and the system of condensed reporting was fairly applied. She was accused by a co-respondent of legal in- cest, the accusation was backed by a waiter's testimony, and she was ruined in the world's eyes for life. The next time the case was heard unexceptionable evidence was produced showing that the accusation was not only false, but impossible ; but the evidence being disagreeable was reported by only one journal, the Standard, which, for this act of ordinary justice, was next day held up to public obloquy. That seems to us the very brutality of prudishness, a distinct assertion that the maintenance of obscurantism is more important than justice, even in the most serious cases. It seems to us that in this matter journalists are in the position of legislators and founders of creeds. No revelation professing to convey a system of morals and no code of 'laws can ever hope.to,be " clean " throughout, except in purpose, and neither can any daily journal. Even a weekly paper may be compelled—either for the sake of justice, as happened to ourselves in the Toomer case ; or for the sake of national well-being, as in the matter of the Contagious Acts ; or in the interest of human freedom, as in the controversy about female doctors,—to put the conventionalities aside, and speak out plainly, leaving it to the heads of households to circulate or suppress what it says, as they, in their discretion, think fit. People are not to be imprisoned unjustly, or the human race imperilled by disease, because it is, on the whole, most expedient that girls should be kept in a half- light upon certain subjects. Let the paper be kept from them.
But we shall be asked, would we tolerate or wish to tolerate full reports in the papers? Certainly not ; it is because the new doctrines laid down will lead to the circulation of full reports, sold by themselves and for themselves, that we consider them worthy of remonstrance. What we wish is to see the system hitherto pursued in London—though not, we are bound to admit, in the provinces—steadily adhered to,—a careful editing of all doubtful cases by gentlemen who work with the intention of keeping out any thing likely to do injury to public morals, but who are aware that publicity is often the only possible punishment, who dread injustice to individuals, and who recognize the truth that newspapers are and must be addressed to the experienced, and not to boys and girls. Hitherto, with one remarkable recent exception, this task has been very fairly performed, the London daily press being at this moment the cleanest printed in the English language ; and to go farther, as the Saturday Review and the Pall Mall Gazette would have proprietors do, is, we believe, to introduce a new set of evils very much worse than those they now so eloquently denounce. Their advice, if it were followed, would substitute for Decency a system of Obscurantism which could not be maintained, and in many cases ought not to be maintained, in the interest not only of justice, but of the highest morality. Free States must respect the first principles of their existence. Secret trials in England are simply impossibilities, and the only effect of obscurantism is to take reporting out of the hands of gentlemen and entrust it to black- guards, who at this minute are flooding London with a Holywell- Street literature, that is nevertheless protected by law.
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