weeping accusation, cases in point have
been sufficiently numerous to cause a want of confidence in many
quarters against the entire press.

The doings of newspaper editors are not catalogued in print at Paris, as
in America; but their influence being more occult, is not the less
powerful, and it is this feeling that leads people to pay more attention
to this or that leading article than to mere news. The announcement of a
treaty having been concluded between certain powers of Europe, may not
lower the funds; but if an influential journal expresses an opinion that
certain dangers are to be apprehended from the treaty in question, the
exchanges will be instantly affected. This is an instance among many
that the French people are to be led in masses. Singly they have
generally no ideas, either politically or commercially.

The importance of a journal being chiefly centered in that portion
specially devoted to politics, the writers of which are supposed, right
or wrong, to possess certain influences, it is not astonishing the
editorial offices have few occupants. The editorial department of the
"Constitutionnel" wears a homely appearance, but borrows importance from
the influence that is wielded in it--writers decorated with the red
ribbon are not unfrequently seen at work in it. In others, and
especially in the editorial offices of some journals, may be seen,
besides the pen, more offensive weapons, such as swords and pistols.
This is another result of the personal system of journalism. As in
America, the editor may find himself in the necessity of defending his
arguments by arms. He is too notorious to be able to resort to the
stratagem of a well-known wit, who kept a noted boxer in his front
office to represent the editor in hostile encounters. He goes out,
therefore, to fight a duel, on which sometimes depends not only his own
fate, but that of his journal.

With regard to the personal power of a newspaper name, it is only
necessary in order to show how frequently it still exists, to state that
the provisional government of February, 1848, was concocted in a
newspaper office, and the revolution of 1830 was carried on by the
editors of a popular journal--that among the lower orders in France, at
the present time, the names that are looked up to as those of chiefs,
belong to newspaper editors, whose leading articles are read and
listened to in cheap newspaper clubs, and whose "orders" are followed as
punctually and as