PARLIAMENT AND THE PRESS.

Marlborough Express, Volume V, Issue 241, 23 July 1870, Page 6

PARLIAMENT AND THE PRESS.

Parliament is, unluckily, a body of finite powers, and a very narrow allowance of time. Its capacities for doing business must be. limited by the number of hours in a year, during which an elderly gentiemqm can be kept sitting in a Gothic chair in a-* full-bottomed wig. But to debates in the press, there is no more limit than to currents in the ocean—they flow on boundlessly for ever, rambling hither and, thither and traversing every region accessible to the human mind. Moreover, they are conducted in a way which frees the participant from many temptations. It may be laid down as a general maxim, that a man is a greater humbug on his legs than in his arm chair. Nobody ever made a telling speech without more or less deceiving himself in order to deceive his audience. It is said, I know that anonymous writing is objectionable, because the want of responsibility tempts a man to use unjustifiable weapons of warfare. That may be true, and undoubtedly, many cases occur in which the system operates chiefly in this direction; yet we must not forget that it has certain complimentary advantages. To say the truth I have often wished, in spite of philosopher and moralists, that more, instead of fewer people were anonymous. Perhaps the press would be better if all articles were signed—-I cannot argue that point but sermons and speeches would sometimes be more honest if their authors were concealed. When 1 have seen a good genuine philantrophist learn to bring his benevolence to market, and to purchase with it social popularity, or a place in Parliament, or it may be nothing but applause at public meetings; when I have seen a statesman degenerate into a blatant stump orator, or a powerful preacher appeal to bigotry or ignorance to help him towards the episcopal bench, I have wished that their preaching or speaking might be done by men in masks or convertible into anonymous articles, and therefore incapable of winning popular renown for the authors. The responsibility which is imposed upon public actors often does them good; but with the resppnsiblity comes a temptation which few men have the power thoroughly to resist. One of the commonest diseases of the day is a fatty degeneration of the moral and intellectual tissues, to which the tepid atmosphere of mutual-admiration societies is a predisposing cause. —Cornhill Magazine.