TOPICS OF THE DAY.

TREATMENT OF THE PRESS BY WIGS AND TORIES IN POWER.

WE regret that it is impossible for us to 'Aare in the Standard's pleasing anticipations of the advantsqes which would result to our able and well-conducted bretnren of the Press from the return of the Conservatives to 'office. It would be gratifying to think that so powerful a party in the nation had been the subject of a conversion, so sudde.n and salutary as almost to be deemed miraculous, and had Thereby acquired a title to public confidence which they have hitherto wanted. But sudden conversions in politics, as well as in religion, are justly regarded with suspicion, and men require proofs to persuade them of their reality : they ask,. where are "the fruits meet for repentance?" Last week, we expressed our disbelief that either section of the Aristocracy would treat that portion of the Press which they had bought, otherwise than as a degraded instrument to effect their own ends. The Standard says that our reasoning is incorrect, because it goes upon [the hypothesis " ?hat all people are as cor- rupt and selfish as Whigs," and that the country is in future to be governed, in spite of the Reform Act, by the machinery used up to 1831.

We believe that, as regards the treatment of the 'Press, the Whig people in power are just as corrupt and selfish as the Tory people, and not more so. To prove this, let us ask, in the first place, how Whig officials treat the Newspapers that are dignified with the appellation of their organs ?

. They occasionally furnish them with exclusive information, or -what passes for information, respecting the intentions of Govern- ment on certain points of foreign and domestic, policy : they au- thorize them to contradict or confirm rumours of appointments, changes, &c.; and persons connected with their establishments have the run of the public offices, and the privilege of whisper- ing with Under-Secretaries and Treasury Clerks. The advan- tages thus obtained, it is of course the cue of the favoured par- ties to exaggerate. They would fain have it believed that they are in the confidence of the Government. But such a notion is ridiculously false. The Treasury Newspapers are convenient for the dissemination of such statements as their patrons believe it to be advantageous to them to impose upon the public. Hints and surmises, frequent palterings in a double sense, a plentiful use of the suppressio yeri, with a sprinkling of small facts, form the staple of the official communications of the Government with their chosen organs. The whole truth rarely escapes out of Don ning Street to the parties, whom those not in the secret sup- pose to be the trusted coadjutors of the Ministry ; but who are, in point of fact, the mere agents or tools for the promulgation of such portions of the truth, and the mere advocates of such opi- nions, as it suits their patrons to communicate and maintain. At -the present time, when the subalterns in office are supposed not to be scrupulously faithful in keeping the secrets of their employers, we question whether a Tory journal is not likely to possess more correct information on many points than the avowed Ministerial Press.

'Our readers will be able, from the foregoing remarks, to appre- ciate the amount of the advantage which a connexion with Minis- ters confers on a newspaper. What does the Government expect and exact in return for this obligation ? In brief—a surrender of all title to independence. A Ministerial organ talks sometimes of

"affording an independent support to Government ;" but this is an empty sound. If the official gentlemen cannot depend upon an unflinching subserviency, the newspaper cannot depend upon the

Treasury scraps of news of various kinds. Therefore it is, that upon all questions the journal and the Ministers agree ; and very

frequently the former is obliged to eat its own words, refute its

'own arguments, and try every art of shabby sophistry, to disguise from its readers its lamentable dereliction of principle. Thus we

see one paper, which formerly occupied a very honourable and in- dependent position, now that it is 'degraded into a mere Treasury tool, abandoning its advocacy of the Repeal of the Corn-laws, arguing against the Ballot, and using all its efforts to keep these and similar questions in abeyance, which it formerly discussed with the vigour and perseverance which their importance de- manded. What a woful variety of shiftings, changes, and jum- blings of all sorts of things, is observable in the conduct of an- other able newspaper, which till the accession of the Whigs to power, never condescended to palliate misconduct in the mighty,

or fabricate excuses for political truckling. in the mean ! The trammels of subserviency are still galling to this latter journal ;

and its extreme uneasiness under the infliction, is occasionally

manifested by a kind of convulsive kicking, which testifies to the severity of its sufferings, and tends greatly to diminish its

usefulness to the taskmaiters of the Treasury. These gentle-

men, it is notorious, 'will not accept of a divided allegiance; they demand that the whole man, body and soul, should be given

up to their service. Mistakes are severely reprehended; and an intimation against the infallibility of Government is only to be atoned for by an abject confession of error.

Such is the treatment, it is evident to all eyes, which the Whig Ministers think good enough for the Press. What the Whigs now are, the Tories were when in power. It is needless to dwell on this part of the subject ; for it is fully admitted by the Stasdard, and no one doubts the fact, that the conduct of the party new in Opposition was such as we have reprobated is the existing Ministry', One instance of the degrading subserviency which the very last Tory Minister exacted from the Government Press is notorious : the Duke of WELLINGTON, after having in- sisted on the management of a paper being intrusted to a gentle- man of his own nomination, transferred his patronage from that paper to another, because the editor whom he had named refused to insert an article, written by the Duke himself, against all Re. form of the House of Commons.

We are told, indeed, that the Conservatives have " had enough of a bribed press," and will now pursue a different course, and stri ie to raise its character. But where are we to look for evidence of this determination? Certainly not in their most recent public acts. During the last session of Parliament we saw nothing in the con-. duet of the WELLINGTONS, BEAUFORTS, ABERDEENS, and PEELS,. which indicated a new-born respect and affection for the Press.. Nay, it is but six months since this journal was put on its trial by one of them, for an old story, touched upon for an instant, as an illustration of a general argument, and very obviously devoid of

malice towards the prosecutor, whom it did not inculpate or even allude to : the prosecution, too, was nit in the form which allows the truth of a statement to be investigated, but in one of the most odious forms of the libel law process,--ithat of criminal informa- tion,—a process which indeed, thanks to the peculiar strength of

our case and the accident of an intelligent Jury, did not deprive us of an honourable acquittal, but which left us nevertheless to bear the unjust burden of our own expenses added to the annoy- ance of a two-years lawsuit.

The Standard says, that the Conservatives are aware that we are in a revolution, and that the country cannot be governed by

the same machinery as formerly. But we have been "in a revo- lution" for years: and it is but five months since the Conserva- tive bands mustered in the House of Lords to throw out the Local

Courts Bill,—a measure which the too Liberal Standard exerted

its eloquence in vain to induce them to pass. Again therefore, looking to all their recent public conduct, we are forced to the

conclusion, that the Conservatives, " in the Revolution," differ from Conservatives before the Revolution, only in the want of their places.

Although the Standard may have received private assurances which it deems worthy of credit, relative to the altered views of the Tory leaders, yet it cannot be expected that those who are not in their secrets can credit the reality of so sudden a conversion, without further evidence.