THE FRENCH JOURNALIST.

Ashburton Herald, Volume I, Issue 186, 31 October 1878, Page 2

THE FRENCH JOURNALIST.

(From French Piclwes in English Chalk.

A French jourdalist is a man of weight. It may be alleged that his regard for facts is small, that his judgments on men and things have more variety of range than depth, that his temper often gets the better of him, in his ardent desire that the world should be moved by his prose, he breaks out in paradoxes well calculated to bewilder the weak minds who look to the press for guidance. It may be urged that the French journalist is not over-scrupu-lous nor over-wise—that he prefers the discomfiture of a foe to the triumph of a principle, and he wquld never miss a point to save a truth. It may be asserted that he is, socially speaking, bumptious and truculent, for it is impossible to enter a drawing-room where he may happen to be without being at once made aware of his presence and abashed by it, so impetuous is his flood of talk, so dogmatic his observations, so jaunty his strut, so wholly self-satisfied the expression of his countenance. All this may be said, and more ; still the fact remains that the journalist is a power, and one whom men dread. Be he ever so young and ignorant—and ignorant he almost invariably is, whether he be young or not —people truckle to him. He has usurped the public homage and the public fear that were once bestowed on astrologers and court fools, but his resemblance to the jester is greater than to the astrologer, for whereas the popular belief in his devilling powers may be limited, none can doubt his prerogative to stab reputations irresponsibly under cover of his profession. The French press laws, which have done so much to keep newspapers in terror of Government, have left them almost absolutely free to molest private persons. People may challenge the journalist if they dare, or thrash him if they can, but except for the fear of swordthrusts or cane-wheles the mail plies his vocation uncontrolled, and may use his pen indifferently either as a weapon to puncture with or an instrument to bespatter. Nothing exceeds the power of the French journalist, unless it be his malice in .using it, and his conceit in boasting of it. He is a strange excrescence on the surface of modern civilization—a bramble, briar, or stinging nettle ; and no wonder that people should handle him tenderly, for he is harmful by nature. A statesman enters a drawing-room, brushes uncere* moniously past officers who have bled and grizzled in their country’s service, philosophers who have grown grey in promoting science, painters, composers, whose works have added to the nation’s glory ; but he stops before a-puny young man with an eye-glass and a pretentious head of hair, and bows affably to him. A few months before, that puny young man was a puny clerk in the stateman’s office, but having deserted his high stool and desk to write in a newspaper of large circulation, it is now in his power to render his Qld chief ridiculous in the eyes of 50,000 readers by assailing him every morning with barbed jokes and spiteful insinuations. Thus were the Sophists of ancient Rome a terror and a plague to the great and the wise; but the voices of the Sophists reached no further than the Forum’s limits, whereas that of the jouma* ,list rings in the ears of th§ million, 'N