COUNTRY NEWSPAPERS.
TOPICS OF THE DAY.
A DAILY journal has announced, as one of its intended improve- ments, a greater attention than ordinary to the contents of provin- cial newspapers : it promises to represent their opinions, and avows a great respect for their decisions. This is irony. With a few exceptions, it is remarkable with how small a portion of ability the country newspapers are conducted : beyond a few local announce- ments their destitution of interest is striking in the extreme. In all but mere priority of intelligence, it is true, the position of the editors for commenting on public events is more favourable than that of the journalist in the capital : generally speaking, however, they content themselves with copying in the lump the leaders of some London weekly paper in which they have confidence ; or, when they do venture upon original disquisitions, with some re- markable exceptions we repeat, it is in a style of inflated bombast better becoming a forum of spouters than an organ of intelligence and instruction. The country editors are not in fact aware of their advantages, or assuredly, if they did not write political articles of value, they might take the pains to collect an amusinc,6 and instruc- tive compilation. There are models of provincialpapers from which they may take pattern, though we are far from thinking that even these models are incapable of improvement. But the idea broached by the New Times, of collecting, from the present race of provincial journals, the sense of the different counties and towns in which they are published, is little short of ridiculous. We complain of them that they are by no means the organs of their respective places of publication, beyond being instrumental in cir- culating mercantile advertisements : so far from representing the opinion of their neighbourhood, it is rare to find any opinions at all in their columns, except those which they copy from the Lon- don journals. We would raise the character of the country pa- pers ; we would employ more and higher talent in their construc- tion; and then indeed, instead of depending upon the London pa- pers for all that they communicate, they would in their turn strengthen them and increase their sources of instruction. The quiet and leisure of the country are so well adapted to literary pur- suits, that we might look to them for able articles on science and literature, or at any rate for a tasteful selection from the publi- cations of the day. The operation of the laws is more effectually watched in the country than in town ; and the Legislature might derive much solid information from a body of able men in every district who had courage and education sufficient to lead the atten- tion of the public to really important questions. When the sta- tistics of Scotland were inquired into, the requisite information was sought from every parish priest: if editors of country news- papers, instead of being simply the zealots of some paltry party politics, were the real schoolmasters of adults, such as we would have them, it is to such a body of enlightened inquirers that all requisitions for local information would be directed. It will be an epoch in the history of newspapers, when the editors, instead of pronouncing oracular sentences upon subjects respecting which it is impossible that they should be able to form an opinion for want of information, shall employ their minds upon questions the data of which are all before them. Cultivation makes the desert a gar- den : if any person feels himself at a loss in the country, it is be- cause he is ignorant—let him acquire science, and the barren plain will present a flower at every step.
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