improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and
demoralising. Somebody--was it Burke?--called journalism the
fourth estate. That was true at the time, no doubt. But at the
present moment it really is the only estate. It has eaten up the
other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual
have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say
and says it. We are dominated by Journalism. In America the
President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever
and ever. Fortunately in America Journalism has carried its
authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme. As a natural
consequence it has begun to create a spirit of revolt. People are
amused by it, or disgusted by it, according to their temperaments.
But it is no longer the real force it was. It is not seriously
treated. In England, Journalism, not, except in a few well-known
instances, having been carried to such excesses of brutality, is
still a great factor, a really remarkable power. The tyranny that
it proposes to exercise over people's private lives seems to me to
be quite extraordinary. The fact is, that the public have an
insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth
knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like
habits, supplies their demands. In centuries before ours the
public nailed the ears of journalists to the pump. That was quite
hideous. In this century journalists have nailed their own ears to
the keyhole. That is much worse. And what aggravates the mischief
is that the journalists who are most to blame are not the amusing
journalists who write for what are called Society papers. The harm
is done by the serious, thoughtful, earnest journalists, who
solemnly, as they are doing at present, will drag before the eyes
of the public some incident in the private life of a great
statesman, of a man who is a leader of political thought as he is a