at expense through private
agents, or else by favour through official channels, that is, from
the professional politicians. The Official Press makes and unmakes the
politicians. Therefore, the politician is careful to keep it informed
of truths that are valuable to him, as well as to make it the organ of
falsehoods equally valuable.

Most of the official papers, for instance, were informed of the Indian
Silver scandal by the culprits themselves in a fashion which
forestalled attack. Those who led the attack groped in the dark.

For we must remember that the professional politicians all stand in
together when a financial swindle is being carried out. There is no
"opposition" in these things. Since it is the very business of the
Free Press to expose the falsehood or inanity of the Official
Capitalist Press, one may truly say that a great part of the energies
of the Free Press is wasted in this "groping in the dark" to which it
is condemned. At the same time, the Economic difficulty prevents the
Free Press from paying for information difficult to be obtained, and
under these twin disabilities it remains heavily handicapped.

THE POLITICAL LAWYERS

We must consider separately, for it is not universal but peculiar to
our own society, the heavy disability under which the Free Press
suffers in this country from the now unchecked power of the political
lawyers.

I have no need to emphasize the power of a Guild when it is once
formed, and has behind it strong corporate traditions. It is the
principal thesis of "The New Age," in which this essay first appeared,
that national guilds, applied to the whole field of society, would be
the saving of it through their inherent strength and vitality.

Such guilds as we still have among us (possessed of a Charter giving
them a monopoly, and, therefore, making them in "The New Age" phrase
"black-leg proof") are confined, of course, to the privileged
wealthier classes. The two great ones with which we are all familiar
are those of the Doctors and of the Lawyers.

What their power is we saw in the sentencing to one of the most
terrible punishments known to all civilized Europe--twelve months
hard labour--of a man who had exercised his supposed right to give
medical advice to a patient who had freely consulted him. The patient
happened to die, as she might have died in the hands of a regular
Guild doctor. It has been known for patients to die under the hands of
regular Guild doctors