From the Boston Traveller. CHEAP PAPERS RISING UP IN LONDON. LONDON, July 19th, 1847. about to be broken up by its own power. It refers "We knew perfectly in the outset, that the final maintenance of the fivepence by any portion of the press in the face of our success, was a thing impossible. One of two events was, we knew, to happen-either we were to be crushed by the power of the high price ere our principle should have time to take root, or the high price must ultimately succumb everywhere to our principle. This our rivals knew; it was their cue to conceal that knowledge so far as professions went; but they betrayed it by the unblushing combination to which they lent themselves for our ruin. Their coalition against ourselves has signally failed. The Chronicle has but led where the rest must follow." We are now in the midst of a newspaper revolution! The London Press proprietors are alarmed. The great "thunderer" trembles! The cheap, single sheet is fighting the dear, double sheet. The warfare is exceedingly interesting to the spectators. About a year since a new daily paper forced itself into a limited circulation by an enormous outlay of capital and a vast combination of talent. This was called "The Daily News." The price per copy was originally fivepence. The paper soon changed hands, and was published as a single sheet at half price. It then had to fight along single-handed and unassisted, except by the public. It rapidly gained an immense circulation; its high-priced contempo- The Morning Chronicle replied in a long, leadraries combined against it, but they could not an- ing article, on the 7th, to the attack of the Times, nihilate it. It has lived upwards of a year, and is which it calls "ill-tempered and ill-mannered.' now strong and healthy. It is sold for threepence. This angry tirade is brought to a close, says the Its circulation is upwards of twenty thousand Chronicle, "by a declaration that the Times has no copies daily. It has been compelled to expend interest in the matter. It is through pure philanvast sums for foreign intelligence. The other pa- thropy, no doubt, that it calls its rival in business pers combine and share the expense of the India almost a pickpocket." As to the account given by news. This paper receives it through Waghorn's the Times of the cost of producing its own paper, overland express, and pays the whole expense! the Chronicle denounces it as a deception, as Notwithstanding such outlays, the Daily News is a nothing whatever is said about the advertising inyoung giant. What is the result? The Morning come. It also refers to the opinions of the Chronicle, a dignified, strong, able, popular journal, the organ of Palmerston, the pet of the whigs "He may be anything this week, and anything and free-traders, is compelled to follow its younger else the next. He puts principles off and on like rival! On the 5th of July appeared three lines his gown; and whether the present rage be reform, over the leader, stating that on and after July 26th, excitement, or conservative reaction, hostility to a the Morning Chronicle would be sold for four- free-trade budget, or hostility to a corn law, Pupence! This announcement astonished everybody. seyite extravagance or no-popery prejudice, his Cui bono? Is it a political move? Is it to crush passions, thoughts, eloquence, seem ready to flow the Daily News, or the Times? Is it to influence along with every temporary current of public opinthe elections? Nobody could tell. The Times ion. It is certainly cool enough in a journal which came out with a gruffy leader on the 6th, and said keeps up only a forensic acquaintance with princifourpence never could pay editors, reporters, print- ple, as a part of the machinery of trade, to lecture ers, compositors, correspondents, repair of machin- anybody upon character." ery, interest on capital, and a dozen items of expense. The Times says: "A respectable contemporary announced yesterday his intention of reducing the price of his paper to fourpence in the course of this month. As there can be no doubt that a really good paper cannot be published for less than fivepence, the announcement, of course, implies that an inferior article will be given, and that our contemporary is driven by sheer necessity to give up his present terms, and take to a lower business. The incident of a sudden drop in the world, from a good shop to a cheap shop, or from a first-rate manufactory to dealing in secondhand goods, is so familiar as to excite no surprise, were it not that hitherto there have not been these downfalls in the newspaper world. But the incident is the same, and means the same, in whatever line of life it occurs. 29 The Times goes on to give the cost of its own double sheet, and single sheet supplement, and then very justly remarks that "To render the channels of intelligence proof against continual attempts at bribery in one form or another, the most liberal scale of payment is required; and if once the correspondence, or the reporting of a paper falls into the hands of needy and ill-requited men, the public will be at the mercy of those who will bribe the highest." Times: The Chronicle then refers its readers to its own steady and sustained predominance of the same political principles through past years, and says that its opinions have passed into the statute book of the country. The Daily News of the 7th, returns to this subject. It exposes the dishonest statement of the Times respecting the cost of that sheet. It refers to its "vain and braggart influence," its "madness" at the defection of an ally, and the shake of its rattle instead of a thunderbolt! The News asks why the Chronicle, which for half a century has been conducted on principles higher and purer than were ever contemplated by the Times, should change its character because it lowers its price, and become as mean and unprincipled a thing as the paper which thus sordidly denounces it? Every copy of a "really good paper," says the Times, costs the proprietors fourpence and five eighths of a penny: so that only three eighths remain "out of the price of a paper for the other expenses of its production." "What monstrous duplicity is this," exclaims the News: "Why is no mention made of the £100,000 a year received for advertisements? The Times is beyond all shame, and repeats its facts and figures as if their falsehoods had not been already exposed. The forgotten profit of yesterday's advertisements The Daily News of the 6th, gave an article on is three hundred and twenty pounds! As to the the same subject, congratulating itself and the pub-morality of the Times, it assures its readers that it lic that the high-priced newspaper monopoly was not only has to pay for talents and industry, but it has also to pay for its integrity. It has no protection | est point of the phalanx that defended the old." against the bribery of those whom it employs but The Times must follow. "We give the world our that of paying them liberally itself. It makes its positive promise," says the News, "that it shall liberality a bribe; bribes its own men not to let have its Times at a reduced price," and then it themselves be bribed. According to the Times, will boldly assert that it was the originator of the there can be no honesty unless men are highly cheap newspaper press! paid. A poor man must be corrupt. Its own argument is simply and logically this:-bribe high enough, and you may bribe the Times itself! Again, pay the Times less than fivepence and it cannot answer for being incorrupt.' The News goes on to state that its own writers are not only as well paid as those on the Times; but that they are even better paid, and it challenges the Times to proof. The Morning Post joined in this battle, and copied at length, and conspicuously, the first article of the Times which appeared on the subject; subsequently, it acknowledged the importance of the controversy, and recognized the Chronicle as "the ablest of those that steadily and consistently uphold what are called liberal views in politics.' The Post characterized the article in the Times as "bitter, bold and boastful.". -"It is a powerful attack on cheap newspapers in general, and a very severe rebuke of the Chronicle in particular." It speaks of the reply of the Chronicle as "mild and temperate." The Post, naturally enough, believes that the Chronicle has come to "a most unwise resolution" in respect to the reduction in price. The Post cannot think that the paper can live at the proposed price. On the 7th, the Times returned to the subject, and declared that it had nothing to fear from the competition of a threepenny or fourpenny paper. "We apprehend no danger to ourselves as long as we continue to give the public five pennies worth for their fivepence. That is the real point at issue." Again, the Times says, "To us it would be a matter of indifference, perhaps even an absolute benefit, if we were the only morning journal that maintained its price. We should then be left a quiet monopoly of the market." The Times then apologizes to the Chronicle for charging it with inconsistency, and states that it did not intend to do anything of the kind. The Daily News, delighted with this newspaper quarrel, returns to the battle-field on the 8th. It speaks of the Times and Punch in the same sen tence: "It is Punch's especial vocation to make men wise through laughter; and that skilful jester assumes, therefore, a pompous air of self-respect, and talks of his own influential doings after a fashion which, he assures us, makes her majesty and Prince Albert roar at the breakfast-table! But the Times does the very same thing in sober seriousness." The Chronicle will be published at the reduced price upon a large single sheet, and will give double sheets only when parliamentary debates or important news require them. It is generally reported that the proprietors of the Morning Herald, unable to stand against the competition of low prices, will immediately follow the example of the Chronicle, and reduce the price of that paper to fourpence. A NEW ENGlander. LORD BROUGHAM. [PART OF AN ARTICLE IN THE LAW MAGAZINE.] WE now come to the man who seems more than any other of his contemporaries intended by Providence for the consolation of blockheads, and to justify that passion for mediocrity by which the inhabitants of this island are as much distinguished as a Frenchman is by his reverence for genius. Not that Lord Brougham is by any means the prodigy which at one time it was the fashion for terrified squires and liberal tradesmen in country towns to imagine, and which for a short time it suited the purpose of a triumphant party to hold up as the grand instrument of human regeneration-an error which they have since had ample leisure to repent. Far otherwise. Nor does Lord Brougham, in his more sober moments, so consider himself. He knows better; he has had occasion to find that after all the world too knows better, and that his admirers, if he has any left, have either very shallow sense, or very deep hypocrisy. As a man of science his merit is well known. There is in the Edinburgh Review a paper written by Lord Brougham, containing a bitter attack on one of the first philosophers in England, who lived to see the discovery, for which he was treated by an unscrupulous sciolist as a quack and a mountebank, universally appreciated. For a time, however, the attack was successful. Dr. Young* was almost broken-hearted; with all the modest simplicity of genius, he never retaliated on his presumptuous and unprovoked enemy; but left time to determine to whom the *In January, 1803, was published his (Lord Brougham's) critique on Dr. Young's Bakerian Lecture " On the Theory of Light and Colors," in which lecture the doctrine of undulations and the law of interferences was maintained. This critique was an uninterrupted strain of blame and rebuke. "This paper," the reviewer said, " contains nothing which deserves the name either of The News then quotes from the Chronicle, and experiment or discovery." He charged the writer with says it is glad of so distinguished a convert to logic." "We wish," he cried, "to recall philosophers to "dangerous relaxations of the principles of physical cheap wares; it confesses that "the gross and no-the strict and severe methods of investigation," describtorious profligacy of the Times," suggested the ing them as then pointed out by Bacon, Newton, and the undertaking of the Daily News. "The wish to like. Finally, Dr. Young's speculations were spoken of defeat the immorality of power by a powerful and as an hypothesis, which is a mere word of fancy; and honest competition, gave a motive to our endeavors in the outset, courage in the progress, and insures a triumph in the end." The News then refers to the boast of the Times that it had not lost a subscriber or an advertisement through the cheap News. "Perhaps not, but the association of which you formed a part has. The attack of the new principle, of course, told first upon the weak-432. the critic added, "We cannot conclude our review without entreating the attention of the Royal Society, which has admitted of late so many hasty and unsubstantial papers into its transactions;" which habit he urged them to reform. * ** *The reviewer showed ignorance as well as prejudice in the course of his remarks; and Young drew up an answer, which was ably written; but Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii., p. being published separately, had little circulation. virtues, this is not the age when alone they raise a man to power. To what, then, does Lord Brougham owe whatever influence belongs, or ever has belonged to him? The answer brings us to our point; he is an orator. This faculty it is to which he owes his elevation. As a statesman, mixed up though he has been with the most important measures of the century, having no place at all;-as a jurist, being without any of the slightest approach to the faintest gleam of knowledge of the volumes in which the treasures of jurisprudence are deposited; confused notion of the principles on which law reform ought to proceed at all, and perfectly unable to apply that notion-ambiguous, vacillating, and obscure as it is-to the Augean heap of English jurisprudence ;-as a friend, what Horner, Sidney Smith, Macintosh, and many others (we know what we say) have found him-inaccurate to a degree that makes it impossible to rely on any one statement, touching any given subject, that he makes either as an author or in his place in parliament-an intriguing adherent-a perfectly unsafe counsellor-an historian without research, as he was reproach of sciolist and vain pretender might most denying that Lord Brougham possesses all these properly be applied. Time has decided; and Lord Brougham's article still remains a proof of good nature, candor, and scientific ability, to which few men of any age or country have it in their power to appeal. For the Society of Useful Knowledge Lord Brougham was good enough to compose part of a treatise on hydrostatics, so utterly erroneous, that it was called in and cancelled. As a legislator, he is simply ridiculous. Eldon himself is a plummet over him. His attempts in that line, when backed by the whole power of the state, partly from precipitation, partly from ignorance, partly from as a law reformer, having only a shadowy and that incapacity to go to the bottom of any subject which seems to be a principle of his nature, have been, without exception, complete and ignominious failures. Witness his court of bankruptcy, which as established by him cost this country fifteen or twenty thousand pounds yearly, the principal business of which has been done for some years by Sir James Bruce, at odd hours taken from his duties as vice chancellor, with the greatest ease, to the perfect satisfaction of the public, and without the expense of one shilling to the country. Nothing, indeed, has made the reform of the law so difficult or delayed it so long as the prominent part which a translator of Demosthenes without Greek-ready Lord Brougham has found it expedient to take in a fit of candor to bow down before those to-day on among its supporters. He has attempted much, whom he yesterday poured out the wildest and most and done nothing. As a scholar in the ancient extravagant invective-ready to assail from motives, languages, his translation of Demosthenes, the work if public, the least intelligible, those with whom he of years, is marked by signs of ignorance which a long has acted-with an upstart's idolatry of rankschoolboy to whom it had been set as a holiday's intoxicated to a ludicrous degree with the first task would probably have avoided; and he seldom symptoms of what he mistook for court favorquotes a line of Virgil without falling into some unsound-capricious—interested-Lord Brougham error denoting that his acquaintance even with the is unhappily for this country the first* orator of his Latin tongue is of the most superficial nature. His life of Voltaire is trite, insipid, and even weak; and in his life of Rousseau and criticism of his works, he actually omits, probably he never read them, the "Lettre à l'Archevêque de Paris," and the "Lettres de la Montagne," the most splendid examples, in the opinion of Villemain, of Rousseau's burning eloquence and consummate logical dexterity. As a metaphysician, for he has rushed "invitâ Minervâ" even upon the ground, it is difficult to understand how any man, in the habit of mixing at all with foreign society, can be so completely unconscious of what every student in Paris and on the other side of the Rhine is familiar with, so ignorant of the actual state and past history of that science as his writings prove him to be. To Roman and English law he is not indeed equally a stranger; for of the former, as his writings show, he has the very alphabet to learn, and with the simpler rudiments of English law he certainly has, at the expense probably of many suitors, at length acquired a superficial knowledge. How then has it come to pass that this man was chancellor for a short time during the whig administration, and that since his junction with the tories—the whigs having of course abandoned all their principles, and the tories theirs also -for Lord Brougham assures us he has remained immovable, like the earth in the Ptolemaic theory -the tories have thought it worth their while to repay his honest exertions in their behalf by an almost unlimited amount of patronage? Are we to look for this secret influence in his high moral qualities in his inflexible adherence to truth? in his purity of life his disdain of the weapon with which, in the Italian poet's phrase, Judas jousted? in that steady friendship on which it appears that Horner, Macintosh, and Sidney Smith had so perfect a reliance? Alas, though we are far from day. Not that his day is one of great orators-far from it. About the time of his first appearance in parliament, he himself, in a passage which he has not yet found an occasion directly to contradict, has asserted that it was the mediocrity of their talents, that with one or two exceptions had recommended ministers to the notice of the regent. The opposition was led by Mr. Ponsonby, a man entitled to respect for many valuable qualities, but without those conspicuous and brilliant talents, which have generally characterized a man intrusted with functions so important. In truth, for many years Mr. Canning was Lord Brougham's principal and only formidable antagonist. Of Mr. Canning's merits as an orator it is not our intention now to enter into any detailed criticism. With the exception of his speeches on the bullion question, and his vindication of the Lisbon mission, we think posterity will be at a loss to find in his speeches wherewithal to account for his unrivalled ascendency during so many years in the house of commons. His wit was often flippant, his language, though polished, was too apparently studied and elaborate. His style, elegant undoubtedly, was sometimes monotonous, and seldom was remarkable for vehemence and impetuosity. Demosthenes, said Cicero, "non tam vibrasset fulmina nisi numeris contorta ferrentur." And it is difficult to control a feeling of impatience at the labored antithesis, the schoolboy phraseology, the rather obvious quotations, the very inadequate arguments, and the not very refined jests, which are sometimes employed by Mr. Canning even when the mightiest interests of humanity are at stake. Besides, Mr. *We mean in England; for it is generally allowed that M. Berryer is the first in Europe, with the exception perhaps of Dr. Lopez; but it is hard for a Spaniard to help being eloquent, as it is for an Englishman to express himself tolerably well. Canning was for a long time in a false position"Cabined, cribbed, confined." Obliged to be the champion of a court which detested him, and of bigots whom he despised, it was long before his great powers had full scope and a proper sphere of action. With all these disadvantages, however, he was the decidedly successful antagonist of Lord Brougham, to whom, in our opinion, he was an orator far inferior, in some measure no doubt because he was on the side which the prejudices of the majority led them to supporty but also from Lord Brougham's excessive prolixity and utter want of judgment, of which we find in Romilly's memoirs the following curious instance. "In the course of the debate upon the motion for the increase in the salary of secretary to the admiralty in time of peace, from 3000l. to 4000l. a year, Brougham, who supported the motion, made a violent attack upon the regent, whom he described as devoted, in the recesses of his palace, to the most vicious pleasures, and callous to the distresses and sufferings of others, in terms which would not have been too strong to have described the latter days of Tiberius. Several persons who would have voted for the motion were so disgusted that they went away without voting; and, more who wished for some tolerable pretext for not voting against ninisters, and who on this occasion could not vote with them, availed themselves of this excuse, and went away too; and it is generally believed that, but for this speech of Brougham's, the ministers would have been again in a minority. If this had happened, many persons believe, or profess to believe, that the ministers would have been turned out. Poor Brougham is loaded with the reproaches of his friends; and many of them, who are most impatient to get into office, look upon him as the only cause that they are still destined to labor on in an unprofitable opposition." that it contained every ingredient to provoke the scorn of the wise, to rouse the indignation of the just, to move the pity of the generous. Hatred of oppression is THE English virtue. It required no skill to prove the base motives and infamy of the witnesses by whom the bill was supported; no eloquence beyond the mere statement of facts was necessary to enkindle the sympathies of gentlemen in favor of a guilty, no doubt, but an outraged woman-young, gifted, and magnanimous-married with the vilest objects by the most contemptible of men-cast off by him without even a decent pretext, when those purposes were answered-held up in a strange land by her own husband as a jest to the minions, satellites, and mistresses with whom he herded, loathed by his jaded lust, and persecuted by his more than woman's hate. From the Courrier des Etats Unis. THE PEACE PARTY OF MEXICO, AND THE ELEMENTS WHICH COMPOSE THE MEXICAN NATION. A CORRESPONDENT from Washington depicts with laconic truth, in the following words, the real situation of Mexican affairs: "Interest increases, anxiety augments, doubts multiply, and the hopes of an immediate peace diminish in direct proportion. Scott must give them battle, the most terrible of all, and perhaps the last; but it is necessary it should occur, and the first news we shall receive will be that it has taken place. "After this battle, shall we have peace? It is doubtful. Speak as much as you will of the peace party in Mexico, such a party does not exist. To have peace, the first thing to be done is to create this party, sustain it, treat with it, put it in power, and keep an army there, perhaps for years, to maintain peace, and the peace party at the head of affairs." The entire occupation of the Mexican territory, which appears to be the order of the day, would greatly interfere with the desired result, and be the means of causing an endless war. It was to this want of judgment and an unmanageable temper in Lord Brougham, as well as to a It is difficult to explain in a more brief manner thorough knowledge of his profession, of which the present and the future state of the war, or to Lord Brougham while at the bar knew inconceiva- show in fewer words why peace is impossible, and bly little, that Sir James Scarlett, the most successful under what conditions it might become feasible. In of English advocates, was indebted for his repeated truth, in this labyrinth, filled with hypotheses of triumphs over his precipitate and incautious adver- conjectures, of hopes, and of projects, perhaps the sary. His efforts were sometimes brilliant-his cross- only possible issue has been pointed out-the anticexaminations often very effective; but where man-ipated idea of establishing in Mexico a government agement and dexterity were requisite-where the de facto to treat with it-simply to give to a treaty matter was doubtful, and the facts nicely poised-a real validity, it would be necessary to sustain this where a slight ingredient would make the trembling government so long as it would want a support. scale preponderate-where the case would not bear the broadcast fashion of dealing which suited his attainments and capacity-where there was no fierce attack to be made upon a witness, little room for sarcasm, and no opportunity for declamation, Lord Brougham had as slender a chance of success as any junior in Westminster Hall for the first time robed in camlet, and frowning under that integument of horsehair which, in the true spirit of John Bull, an English traveller assures us is a rampart of the constitution. It was like using the keys of a fortress to open a lady's dressing-box. For ordinary purposes inferior men were preferable. The penknife cut on this side of the page and the other, spoiling the book, which the paper-knife_opened with perfect ease. The speech on the Durham clergy, awful as its sarcasm in some parts was, insured a verdict against his client, who ought perhaps to have been acquitted. Of that on Queen Caroline-admirable in most parts, judicious in some, powerful in all-it should be remembered that it was the very case an advocate would select: It is useless to cherish any reasonable hope of seeing a serious peace party formed in Mexico, with any chance of duration. Our opinion of this subject is based upon the component parts of the nation with which the United States has to deala composition whose heterogeneous elements possess no force of cohesion, as we have said in one of our last articles on the same subject. A rapid glance at these elements will suffice to convince one of this truth. The population of Mexico is composed of three classes of individuals, viz.: strangers, Indians, or properly called Mexicans-that is to say, descendants of the aborigines-and Mexicans descended from the Spanish race. True it is, if these three classes formed a whole body, or even a nationality, the triumph of peace would be soon accomplished. As regards the strangers, it is useless to say, The Spanish Mexicans alone remain to represent war to them is indeed a scourge. The man who what is called the Mexican nation. These are also expatriates himself, does it for one of two objects-divided into two classes-those who possess someeither to make a fortune, to enable him to return to his native country, or else to find a new home, which offers him an easier and more agreeable subsistence than the one he left. In either of these cases, peace is his first interest and his first desire, and most ardently does he pray for it. But his voice is without influence; and his advice is more often received with distrust than with favor. thing, and those who possess nothing. The former naturally is the friend of peace; but the latter, on the contrary, is its declared enemy; for war is always a resource to those who have nothing. This latter class have succeeded for the last twenty years in plunging Mexico in revolution after revolution; and this fact alone proves that they possess this power, and will continue to use it, until some powerful influence throws into the balance its decisive This brief exposé suffices to prove what we have often said that the majority of Mexico is in favor of peace; but that this majority will never be formed into a true party until some energetic power will come to its aid, and serve at the same time as a rallying centre and a point of support. PASSY. The aboriginal Mexicans are very much in the same condition, but under circumstances totally dif-weight. ferent. Cast off with the lowest grades of society, for the most part mule-drivers, deprived of all learning, strangers to their government and the political state of their country, they live isolated in their degradation; they spend their time between the trade they have chosen, the wife they have selected, and their cigarito, which compose the most essential part of their existence. For them, also, peace is the first blessing; but even for this reason, the enemy who leaves them to enjoy their life of labor On the occasion of the Poet's retirement thither from public life. and apathy, is pretty much the same thing as the" compatriot who governed them yesterday; and provided they gain a few more reals, or tobacco does not become dearer, this would be the enemy they would prefer. This explains the inertia of a people who will allow themselves to be conquered by a handful of men, and only interrupt their way of life long enough to allow them time to examine the uniform of the new-comers. PARIS, adieu! I quit thy furthest wall! At Passy shelter and retreat are mine. twenty dollars, or two dollars each for separate volumes. Any numbers may be had at 124 cents. AGENCIES.-The publishers are desirous of making arrangements in all parts of North America, for increas The LIVING AGE is published every Saturday, by E. LITTELL & Co., at No. 165 Tremont St., BOSTON. Price 12 cents a number, or six dollars a year in advance. Remittances for any period will be thankfully received and promptly attended to. To insure regularity in mail-ing the circulation of this work-and for doing this a ing the work, remittances and orders should be addressed to the office of publication as above. Twenty dollars will pay for 4 copies for a year. COMPLETE SETS to the end of 1846, making eleven large volumes, are for sale, neatly bound in cloth, for liberal commission will be allowed to gentlemen who will interest themselves in the business. But it must be understood that in all cases payment in advance is expected. The price of the work is so low that we cannot afford to incur either risk or expense in the collection of debts. |