A JOY FOR JOURNALISTS.
good one for the public, as it gives unknown men a fair chance, widens the area of knowledge in the newspaper offices, and enables those who understand particular subjects to speak freely on them without entering formally into a difficult and risky career. It is not, however, quite so good a one for the journalists. Their wages, if they are writers only, are permanently kept down by the competi- tion of outsiders not anxious to live by their pens, and careless of writing except upon the subjects that interest their own minds ; and their labour, if they are editors, is indefinitely increased. No toil fatigues like reading manuscript, and they have roams of unnecessary manuscript to look over. The number of amateurs in England who firmly believe they can write "leaders" which would make the fortune of any journal, or letters which would interest the whole world, or essays which would startle society, is almost overwhelming, and includes all conditions, both sexes, and every imaginable age. The Prince of Wales does not, we fancy, write articles; but he seems to be the only man in Great Britain who is not willing to try, and does not fancy that ho should succeed ; and the men aro, as compared with the women, diffident and abstemious. We cannot speak for the daily papers, but we could couetantly fill up the Spectator with voluntary but not unpaid contributions, from people who seem ready to discuss any subject high or low, from theology to the Tichborne case, and who very often send papers which show that in their own judgment they have solved, and solved easily, questions which perplex Mr. Gladstone and M. Thiers and Prince Bismarck alike. We declare, from our own experience, we believe there are three or four hundred personsin the United Kingdom who are satisfied that, could they but get a fair hearing, they could extinguish pauperism in a year. Of course, many would-be contributors are of a very different stamp. Some are really familiar with certain specialties, and knowing the extent and accuracy of their own information, cannot understand why the Editor thinks a paper of five columns, say on the foreign policy of the autochthones of Corea, unsuitable to his pages. Nobody will ever tell the world so much about that subject as they could, and it is clearly one of the deepest interest to mankind. Others have something to say worth hearing on a topic of the day,
and knowing well that it is worth hearing, want it "inserted," that is, published as an article, in the teeth of every principle, policy, or prejudice the paper over professed. Upon that point, indeed, outsiders often strike editors as being a little lunatic. A
good many papers, the 'Spectator among the number, will admit
letters diametrically at variance with their own opinions, a policy requiring seine courage while mankind so persistently believes that
a journal has always some eympathy with its correspondents ;
and one paper at least seems able occasionally to publish an article
on one page not reconcilable by tho discerning with the essay
on the next ; but the majority have some scruple in lending their authority to ideas and statements in which their conductors utterly disbelieve. That strikes a good many contributors as tyrannical, and indeed immoral, inasmuch as their convictions are obviously,
ex necessitate rei, the only just convictions possible on the point,
and there can be no producible reason for suppressing them. The
Spectator, to take an extreme instance, has ideas in favour of
morals and the existence of the supernatural, and we have twice been severely scolded as dishonest for rejecting articles one of which denied the possibility of a God and the other denounced marriage. Another and much more numerous class forward papers to which there is only one objection, that they are feeble, or trite, or premature—the last class is oddly numerous, quite a host of people insisting on discussing some subject, say universal suffrage, which may be " up " a dozen years hence ;—and finally there is the class which is of seine service, if only because it reveals the existence of unexpected aberrations of opinion, and for the sake of which all must either be read or " tasted."
As we have said, the system has a very good side, and if the amateurs, when they had fired off their papers, would keep copies of them, wait a reasonable time for an answer, and then go some- where else, all would be simple enough ; but they will not do this. All of them have a secret impression that they aro conferring a favour, while to half of them their manuscripts areas their child- ren, and they will not give them up ; the more foolish they are, the more fond. A bore of this description, finding his rubbish unpublished, will write or call for six months on end, go into a dance of vexation all alone by himself, and probably allege ever after that the editor was paid by seine all-permeating agency to exclude his wisdom and wit. That really happened to ourselves in reference to a perfectly insane account of the machinations of the North, which somebody, presumably a Southerner, wanted us to adopt and endorse. A correspondent has no more right to make us spend money or time on him than to make us advise without
fee, but no amount of warning advertisements will ever convince him of that, except—let us be just—as regards expensed of post- age. When a coutributor wants to be absolutely insufferable, he encloses with his communication a stamp for its return, thereby insuring in most offices,—certaiuly in this one,—that it shall indeed be returned, but returned without reading. Such correspondents, however, are few, and as a rule an Editor reads in some way or other all that is sent him, that is, he uses his experience to discover, perhaps in half a minute, whether a paper deserves real reading, and the rejected are " destroyed " or thrown into the waste-paper basket. The work of the day could not be done on any other system, which till last week had been understood, though not obeyed, on all sides, when a solicitor turns up who says that any such proceeding is entirely illegal. Mr. Walter, having forwarded a paper on Law Reform to the Echo, which the Editor did not want, had not ordered, and could not accept, considered that he had a right to his manuscript back again, and actually brought in the City of London County Court an action of trover. Fancy an action of trover for the bullet fired from a popgun at your head ! It is not too much to say that if he had won, if it had been clear that anybody who chose had a right to worry any paper he pleased with half a ream of unreadable manuscript and then fine its conductors forlosing it, journalism would have become an impossible profession. Fortunately, however, Mr. Commissioner Kerr saw that, and by his decision on Tuesday sent terror among the ranks of newspaper bores. A paper sent to a journal for publication is entrusted to its editor's control, and he may destroy it even within ten minutes of its receipt, and the sender, if he brings an action, will only have costs to pay. The editor may not, of course, sell it, or use it to profit in any way ; but it is in law a letter, and though the copy- right rests in the sender, the property rests with the addressee, the principle which last week we feared was about to be upset. .To triunzphe I The decision seems a little hard, no doubt, on the writer, who may have enclosed a manuscript poem worth a repu- tation, but then he has in his own hands two such easy and thorough remedies for the apparent hardship,—he can keep his manuscript, or he can keep a copy.
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