LORD BROUGHAM, OR HIS FETCH, AND THE NEWSPAPER PRESS.
THE new Number of the Edinburgh Review contains a peevish attack on the London Newspapers, and a very hearty puff of the Penny Magazine. The article is entitled " Progress of the People, and the Periodical Press :" it should be " the Periodical Press, and the Periodical Puff,"—for this flummery about the Lord Chancellor's Penny Publication comes round so regularly, that we can now pretty well calculate the elements of its peri- odicity. The article may or may not be Lord BROUGHAM'S. Of this we know nothing, save that it contains all that lavish profu- sion of silliness which characterizes those recent effusions that have been called Lord BROUGH.A.M'S articles in the Edinburgh.
The puff is direct, and the attack is collateral. The Penny Maga- zine is the source of enlightenment to millions' and it is to be hoped will soon supersede the Newspapers,—in whom may be per- ceived " a growing " dislike of the Penny Publication. The fact is, the Penny Magazine is a grand preparation for an extension of the Suffrage 1 and on the other hand, Newspapers are very abu- sive, very inconsistent, very imperious, are calculated to misguide —but, luckily, nobody listens. The Country Papers are, to be sure, an exception: they have power; they ought to be assisted; and it is to be hoped the Penny Magazine will not supersede them. With this exception, the writer of the article—Lord BROUGHAM or not—reasons of the Periodical Press as OMAR did of the Koran and the Library of Alexandria : are its contents in the Penny Magazine, if they are, then the Newspaper Press is useless; if they are not, then perish the Newspaper Press, for it is naught. Such is a fair representation of the spirit of an article in that famous old Whig publication the Edinburgh Review. Yes, the Edinburgh Review! Our readers may well rub their eyes, and look bails upon what we have said. Let them refer to the attack on Journalism itself, fresh as it has come from the pen of the quasi Lord BROUGHAM. The most obvious thing about it is the soreness and uncomfortable feelings with which it is written, combined with a painful attempt to look unconcerned, and even condescending. It has been said of TALLEYRAND, that such is his command of countenance, that were he being kicked behind, a person looking in his face would perceive no signs of the indignity 'he was suffering. The quasi Lord BROUGHAM has no such self-possession in spite of all his-struggles: keep up what countenance he may, it is 'plain-that the authors-of This quern- lous and faintly-damning affair, is being very seriously kieked- behind all the time he is writing : he attempts to smile and smirk, but every now and then he looks confoundedly grave, not to say black ; and there is a writhing and twisting about his frame, which imply that he would like to apply his hand to the part affected,.were it not his'eue for the moment to-pretend the greatest possible composure. A man may, however, be kicked and feel it too, even through the thickness of a woolsack.
The circulation of the Penny Publications is great,—not only of the much-bepuffed Penny Magazine, but of the other works of the same kind, mentioned by way of cloak in the Edinburgh Review article: it far exceeds that of many long-established and far more useful periodicals. Why ? The writer would have it supposed on ac- count of their excellence—on account of their avoiding politics and polemics—because they supply the " sources whence the streams of pure and useful knowledge fiow." He well knows that this is a gross misrepresentation. The people buy these publications largely, because they cost little : they cost little, because they chiefly steal what they sell ; and others, who only vend what they create, are taxed by a heavy tax, which necessarily limits their circulation to the comparatively rich. That a Minister should join in an in- justice, should puff the benefiter by it, and set himself to abuse the injured and the plundered, is so gross a supposition, that we leave to others even to imagine that the author is the true Lord BROUGHAM ; we cannot believe it. The writer talks of a growing dislike on the -part of the Newspapers to cheap publications: it is a full-grown dislike of being compelled to sell dear, while others, following the example of the Lord Chancellor's Penny Publication, are enabled to glut the market with an inferior and ten-thousand- times-served-up article of information.
" Some of the greater Newspapers are more incensed than others, because they look with dread to the approaching repeal of the Stamp-duties, which will relieve the smaller Journals, and especially the Country Papers." Here is Jesuitry—Jesuitry, too, exceedingly uncomfortable behind. The approaching repeal is the approach of the unfixed fixed star Hercules to the Sun : he is coming, but who will witness his arrival ? It does not shake our nerves in the least. The " greater Newspapers" and their "dread," and the " smaller Newspapers" and their " relief," is all a matter of fable: what will relieve one, must necessarily relieve another. As for the Country Papers, so eternally excepted, because, politi- cally speaking, they can little affect either Lord BROUGHAM or the Ministry—if the repeal of the infamous tax on news injured anybody, it would be just the Country Papers, who might then be partly driven out of their own field even from London.
The attack on the course of the Press through the Reform Bill, the Interregnum, and the First Session of the Reformed Parlia merit, simply amotnts to this—" The Press was every thing, be- cause we lived by it; the Press is nothing, because we fancy we can live without it." Of the impudence of many of the assertions in this part of' the article we might say something ; but we pardon much, for the sake of the difficulty of that man's position, who, in spite of the most peremptory posterior summonses, and much in- ternal discomposure, still resolves to put a calm thee on the matter.
The Press is far from being in all things to our mind; but why have not such men as Lord BROUGHAM combined to make it bet- ter ? On the contrary, He, or his Fetch, abuses it, because it is such as a base restriction has made it: the only effort Lord As- THORP has made has been to delude—of Lord BROUGHAM, to un- dermine it, and now, to slander it—if this corruption of the old Edinburgh is indeed to be laid at his door.
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