that journalists of this order represent public opinion.
It may be doubted whether any honest and serious Tariff Reformer
would for a moment maintain that there was any majority
for Tariff Reform in the country comparable to the ludicrous
preponderance which money has given it among the great dailies.
The only inference is that for purposes of real public opinion
the press is now a mere plutocratic oligarchy. Doubtless the
public buys the wares of these men, for one reason or another.
But there is no more reason to suppose that the public admires
their politics than that the public admires the delicate philosophy
of Mr. Crosse or the darker and sterner creed of Mr. Blackwell.
If these men are merely tradesmen, there is nothing to say except
that there are plenty like them in the Battersea Park Road,
and many much better. But if they make any sort of attempt
to be politicians, we can only point out to them that they are not
as yet even good journalists.



IX. The Moods of Mr. George Moore


Mr. George Moore began his literary career by writing his
personal confessions; nor is there any harm in this if he had
not continued them for the remainder of his life. He is a man
of genuinely forcible mind and of great command over a kind
of rhetorical and fugitive conviction which excites and pleases.
He is in a perpetual state of temporary honesty. He has admired
all the most admirable modern eccentrics until they could stand
it no longer. Everything he writes, it is to be fully admitted,