d, partly educated, and still very
homogeneous enfranchised class, had a certain habit of thinking; its
tranquil assurance upon most theological and all moral and aesthetic
points left political questions as the chief field of exercise for such
thinking as it did, and, as a consequence, the dignified newspapers of
that time were able to discuss, and indeed were required to discuss not
only specific situations but general principles. That indeed was their
principal function, and it fell rather to the eloquent men to misapply
these principles according to the necessity of the occasion. The papers
did then very much more than they do now to mould opinion, though they
did not direct affairs to anything like the extent of their modern
successors. They made roads upon which events presently travelled in
unexpected fashions. But the often cheaper and always more vivid
newspapers that have come with the New Democracy do nothing to mould
opinion. Indeed, there is no longer upon most public questions--and as I
have tried to make clear in my previous paper, there is not likely to be
any longer--a collective opinion to be moulded. Protectionists, for
example, are a mere band, Free Traders are a mere band; on all these
details we are in chaos. And these modern newspapers simply endeavour to
sustain a large circulation and so merit advertisements by being as
miscellaneously and vividly interesting as possible, by firing where the
crowd seems thickest, by seeking perpetually and without any attempt at
consistency, the greatest excitement of the greatest number. It is upon
the cultivation and rapid succession of inflammatory topics that the
modern newspaper expends its capital and trusts to recover its reward.
Its general news sinks steadily to a subordinate position; criticism,
discussion, and high responsibility pass out of journalism, and the
power of the press comes more and more to be a dramatic and emotional
power, the power to cry "Fire!" in the theatre, the power to give
enormous value for a limited time to some personality, some event, some
aspect, true or false, without any power of giving a specific direction
to the forces this distortion may set going. Directly the press of
to-day passes from that sort of thing to some specific proposal, some
implication of principles and beliefs, directly it chooses and selects,
then it passes from the miscellaneous to the sectarian, and out of touch
with the grey indefiniteness of the gener