which I
should like to insist absolutely. I should like it to be a fixed thing
that the name of the proprietor as well as the editor should be printed
upon every paper. If the paper is owned by shareholders, let there be a
list of shareholders. If (as is far more common in this singularly
undemocratic age) it is owned by one man, let that one man's name be
printed on the paper, if possible in large red letters. Then, if there
are any obvious interests being served, we shall know that they are
being served. My friends in Manchester are in a terrible state of
excitement about the power of brewers and the dangers of admitting them
to public office. But at least, if a man has controlled politics through
beer, people generally know it: the subject of beer is too fascinating
for any one to miss such personal peculiarities. But a man may control
politics through journalism, and no ordinary English citizen know that
he is controlling them at all. Again and again in the lists of Birthday
Honours you and I have seen some Mr. Robinson suddenly elevated to the
Peerage without any apparent reason. Even the Society papers (which we
read with avidity) could tell us nothing about him except that he was a
sportsman or a kind landlord, or interested in the breeding of badgers.
Now I should like the name of that Mr. Robinson to be already familiar
to the British public. I should like them to know already the public
services for which they have to thank him. I should like them to have
seen the name already on the outside of that organ of public opinion
called _Tootsie's Tips_, or _The Boy Blackmailer_, or _Nosey Knows_,
that bright little financial paper which did so much for the Empire and
which so narrowly escaped a criminal prosecution. If they had seen it
thus, they would estimate more truly and tenderly the full value of the
statement in the Society paper that he is a true gentleman and a sound
Churchman.

Finally, it should be practically imposed by custom (it so happens that
it could not possibly be imposed by law) that letters of definite and
practical complaint should be necessarily inserted by any editor in any
paper. Editors have grown very much too lax in this respect. The old
editor used dimly to regard himself as an unofficial public servant for
the transmitting of public news. If he suppressed anything, he was
supposed to have some special reason for doing so; as that the material
was actually libellous or literally indecent