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Heath ought himself to do his utmost to promote its success, by expressing his regret for having used language which has conveyed a sense to his readers, that he declares was utterly unlike the sense it conveyed to him. Should the Privy Council, after such an apology, reverse the decree, no one, perhaps, will be more relieved than the admirable judge of the Inferior Court. A more reluctant sentence was evidently never passed. It seemed to him necessary for the sake of maintaining the credit of the Articles. Should it be found necessary for their credit, for the interests of Theology, for the peace of the Church, to deal more gently with the defendant-a few bitter divines may be angry, a benevolent layman will certainly rejoice.

3. And now I will venture to ask why I am bound by the opinions I have expressed, or by any which I have not expressed in this letter, to wish myself free from the obligations of those terrible sixteenth century articles? I find the nineteenth century spirit-the spirit which expresses itself in these prosecutions, and in the shouts of triumph which the religious newspapers utter over every man who has been deprived of a living -very tyrannical and very mean.

I

find the construction which nineteenth century wisdom puts upon the Articles, exceedingly hard and narrow, utterly inconsistent, it seems to me, with the Theology of the Fathers or of the Reformers, of the Creeds and of our Prayers. I find each nineteenth century sect and school ready to spring at the throat of every other. I find divines and prelates

of the nineteenth century ready, or at least, submitting to accomplish the wishes of these sects, and of the journals. that represent them. I fully believe that if these sects and journals, and their instruments, have their way, there will be an end of the documents which restrain their violence, to which they must appeal, and which, by fair means or foul, they would compel to speak their language. But is that a reason why I should enthrone these sects and journals, and denounce what I believe to be so much deeper, larger, less cruel than they are? The doctrine of the National Review is, that one must exalt the present above the past in order that the future may be better than the present. I utterly repudiate that doctrine. Reculer pour mieux sauter is, I hold, the maxim of all true reformation. I know of none which has not appealed to the past against the present, and which has not thus won blessings for the future. Old charters have always been the barriers against prerogative, the grand helps to the assertion of eternal principles. Let the Spectator rebuke our cowardice much as it pleases; let it warn us of the danger of preferring our ecclesiastical emoluments to truth; but let it not hope to make us more true and less selfish, by binding us in slavery to an age which has tried long to worship God and mammon together, and which, if a better spirit is not infused into it, will end with proclaiming mammon to be the only God.

Your obedient servant,

F. D. MAURICE.

as

TWO SONNETS.

BY SYDNEY DOBELL.

1. TO MRS. J. S. B.

Dear Friend, once, in a dream, I, looking o'er
The past, saw the Four Seasons slow advance
Dancing, and, dancing, each her cognizance
So gave and took that neither dancer bore
Her sign, but in another's symbol wore
An amulet to lessen or enhance

Herself till as they fast and faster dance
I see a dance and lose the dancing four.
Thus thy dear Poet, at his sportive will,
Commingling every seasonable mood
Of old and young, and the peculiar ill
Of each still healing with the other's good,
Bends to a circle life's proverbial span

Where childhood, youth, and age are unity in man.

II. TO TOCHTERCHEN, ON HER BIRTHDAY.

As one doth touch a flower wherein the dew
Trembles to fall, as one unplaits the ply
Of morning gossamer, so tenderly

My spirit touches thine. Yet, daughter true
And fair, great Launcelot's mighty nerve and thew
Best clove a king or caught a butterfly,
(Since each extreme is perfect mastery
-Accurate cause repaid in the fine due

Of just effect) and, child, it should be so
With Love. The same that nicely plundereth
The honeyed zephyrs for thy cates and wine

Should train thee with the tasks of toil and woe,

Or hold thee against adverse life and death,

Or give thee from my breast to dearer arms than mine.

ANONYMOUS JOURNALISM.

BY THOMAS HUGHES, AUTHOR OF "TOM BROWN AT OXFORD."

A FEW weeks ago public attention was again called to the state of the press in France. The law by which the signature of articles in newspapers has been made cumpulsory there was commented on by special correspondents, and a contrast drawn between the signed newspaper articles in that country and the anony

mous pamphlets which have of late become so prevalent there, in favour of the latter.

One might have looked for some further notice of the matter, some weighing of the merits of the two systems the personal and impersonalin our papers. But nothing happened.

With the exception of one leader in the Times, on which I propose to make a few remarks, not a word was said on the subject. This is a great pity, for it is a most important one, and deserves the best attention we can give to it. People tell us, and very truly I think, that the press has become a fourth estate in the realm. Many believe it to be, or at any rate that it is likely soon to be, the most powerful of the four. We are all interested then in thinking about it, and making up our minds, each for himself, how far at present it is in a healthy state-whether we ought to be satisfied with it as it stands, or to try to get it amended, and in what particulars. Each of us may be able to do but little towards any reform which he may think desirable, but that is no reason why he shouldn't do what he can. And so every Englishman, who values the freedom which we have, and is anxious that it should take no taint in our generation, ought to give as much spare thought as he can to the consideration of what the press ought to be like in a free country. As soon as he turns to this part of his social duties he will find this question of anonymous writing meet him at every step. Any man's honest thoughts on the subject may be of some use to others; so I shall make no excuse for giving mine; and I hope the intelligent part of my countrymen will give me a hearing. I do not ask this as an outsider, but as a member of the fourth estate myself, and one who has had much experience of public writing both in his own name, and anonymously. At any rate, I have this claim on their attention, that I am writing against my own interest; for, selfishly speaking, anonymous writing is to my taste by far the pleasantest, and, if I didn't believe that there are serious objections to it on public grounds, I most assuredly should never say a word against it.

Let us see then, in the first place, what the Times has to say on the subject. There is nothing like having a text, and the higher the authority from which the text is taken the better.

The article in question, after giving

a sketch of the present state of the French press, goes on, "Ministers and "writers in France are alike convinced "that anonymous writing carries power, "and that the power is lost as soon as "the anonymous character is given up." Everybody in England will agree with the French ministers and writers so far. No doubt anonymous writing does carry power. In other words, over and above the weight or power which a given article would carry by reason of its intrinsic worth, it does, in fact, carry a surplus weight and power by reason that it is anonymous. Certainly that surplus power which its anonymous character gives it the article will lose when that anonymous character is given up. But the article will still carry the weight and power which its intrinsic worth gives it; and the question for us is, not whether anonymous writing carries power, not whether power is lost when the anonymous character is given up-both these we all answer at once with the Times in the affirmative-but whether it is good or not for the country that this extra power should be taken off the article, that the article should stand for what it is worth, and for neither more nor less. This question is just the one which the Times, and all other thick and thin advocates of anonymous writing, simply ignore.

Then comes one of those knock-medown assertions which meet one so often in the leading journal, and to the liberal use of which I believe it owes much of its undoubted power,—“There "is not the smallest doubt in any quarter "but that anonymous writing is the "only eligible or effective form of public "writing. About that fact there is no 'question at all. The only question is, "whether public writing should be "allowed to be powerful or not-in "other words, whether the action of a free press should or should not be "tolerated.'

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"public writing! About that fact there "is no question at all!" No question at all! Then the less said the soonest mended, and we had better lie quietly where we have fallen, and look placidly up into the sky. But presently, when Leviathan has passed right over us, and we are conscious that we have still some power of discerning what is and what is not left in us, we sit up, and look the matter in the face again. "Anonymous the only effective form of public writing?" Why, who are in very fact the most effective living public writers, the few men who are moulding the thought of our day? Maurice in theology, Mill in political science, Darwin in natural science, Ruskin in art, and the rest of them! Take what realm of thought we will, and what do we find? The effective men, the most serious writers, scarcely ever write anonymously; several of those abovenamed, never. Come down a step lower to current literature and what do we find? Why, that the custom of signing, or at any rate of ear-marking articles and dropping the impersonal, is coming into use more and more in periodical literature, in the monthly and weekly magazines more especially. Surely this is one form of public writing, and an eligible and effective one for certain purposes, or it would not be so much in demand.

But on this point of the comparative efficiency of anonymous writing take the most notorious case in point for the last dozen years-the volume of Essays and Reviews. There is no one of them that would not have passed unnoticed in one or other of the Quarterlies had they been published anonymously. Their effectiveness lay, somewhat perhaps in the grouping, but chiefly in the names which were affixed to them. Has it been for the good of the nation, the Church, the writers themselves, that their names were published? have no hesitation in answering, yes.

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If, however, by "public writing," writing for newspapers only is intended, surely it is throwing dust in our eyes to put the proposition in this form.

"Public writing "must mean all writing that is published. But, taking the words in their narrowest sense, are they true then? By no means. To go no farther than the Times itself, what portions of it are the most effective? I believe that the letters on important questions, signed by persons who are known to understand their subjects, are far more effective than leaders. Take one question which has been up lately, "rifled ordnance." Does not a letter signed "Armstrong," or "Whitworth," carry more weight here than a dozen leaders, and ought it not to do so?

Besides, to judge by my own experience, so far from there being no doubt that anonymous writing is the only eligible and effective form of newspaper writing, I find the persons amongst whom I live constantly debating the point whether anonymous writing ought to be tolerated. There is none on which opinions are more honestly and widely divided; but I must say that, on the whole, the persons who are generally in the right lean against anonymous writing, or at most hold it to be an unavoidable evil.

There is in fact, then, a very grave question on this point, where the Times says there is none at all. Let us now look at the other half of the proposition. "The only question is, whether public "writing should be allowed to be power"ful or not-in other words, whether "the action of a free press should or "should not be tolerated." I should say that, on the contrary, here there is no question at all. In England, it is our great boast and blessing that,

"girt by friend or foe,

A man may say the thing he will.” Public speech and public writing are, and must be allowed to be, just as powerful as they can manage to become. Not only the most absolute freedom of speech and writing is tolerated, but no single voice in the nation is lifted up against that freedom. And the question of the freedom of the press has nothing whatever to do with, and should be kept wholly apart from, that of anonymous

writing. It may be a question indeed whether I, having in my own person and name the acknowledged right of saying and printing whatever I please, should have the further right of doing it without giving my name, behind an abstraction called "we," which may mean anybody, or every body, or nobody. Just as in the case of voting, I have now the unquestioned right of giving my vote openly at an election for any candidate I please. The most bigoted advocate of the ballot will not deny this, although he will contend that I ought to have the further right of giving it secretly; in which contention the Times, and the greater part of the nation, would be against him. I cannot see why the same rule should not be good for voting and for writing.

Again, while we are on the question of the power of "public writing," it does not matter how powerful writing is, provided the power be genuine. Any power which a man gains from his character for ability, honesty, disinterestedness, is of the right sort. It has been fairly earned, and may fairly be used. Abuse of it will soon tell, and he will lose it. But power which a man gains from being shrouded in mystery-which he owes, not to his own character, but to the vague sort of belief that he is the representative of some great unknown which haunts the majority of readers of newspapers-is not genuine, and can benefit neither himself nor any one else.

The Times goes on to state its own theory on the subject of the responsibility of journalism :-"The respon"sibility of an article rests with the "conductors of a newspaper. It reflects "the opinions of the journal, and it "would be nothing but a fraud on the

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public if it were issued as the work "of a single man." The statement that an article reflects the opinions of the journal in which it appears has no real meaning, for a journal can no more have opinions than the printing press which is used to bring out each succeeding number. A thing can have no opinions. Each article is the work of

some single man, and, if an honest one, contains as forcible a statement as that man can make of what he thinks on a given subject. No doubt the responsibility of publishing it rests with the conductors; that is to say, with the editor or editors. They can accept or reject it; the writer can consult with them, and may modify some of his opinions in deference to theirs. He has access to any books or documents which belong to the establishment, and has thus facilities for getting at facts which he would otherwise be without. But after all the article is his, and the more his responsibility for it is brought home to him the better for himself and his readers. It is no more a fraud on the public to issue it as the work of a single man than it is to issue the speech of a Secretary of State as his speech: the fraud, if any, lies in issuing it as the work of a mysterious we." The notion that he is to put aside his own individuality, that he is to "reflect the opinions of a journal, or of the conductors of a journal, or, indeed, that he is to "reflect" anything, is about as mischievous a one as a man can have in his head when he sits down to write; and it is this which lowers the character of so much of our public writing.

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The Times then returns to its text, and tells us that the French press may trace many of its misfortunes to "the "neglect of that impersonality by which

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a real press is necessarily charac"terized." One is rather puzzled to get it clear in one's head how any thing can be characterized—that is, distinguished from any other thing-by impersonality. But assuming that it can be so in some sense, how can it be more real for being impersonal?

The chief writers for the French press were men who were aiming at political power and promotion, and found their work as writers tell for this end. "The result was," says the Times, "that a French journal, instead of being "what an English paper is, was simply an organ of a particular section, con"ducted not for the instruction or

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