" TRIAL BY NEWSPAPER"
IN an article, marked by more than its usual acrid power, the New York Nation points out the obvious disadvantages of 4 4 Trial by Newspaper." A conspicuously painful example of that method of dealing with public offences is, as everyone knows, exciting the keenest attention in the United States. A great reputation is attacked, and with the name of the first pulpit orator of the New World many wider considerations than those of mere personal feelihg are bound up. With the facts, or what profess to be such, of the Tilton-Beecher Scandal we are not concerned, and do not mean to concern ourselves. We hasten to say that we are not going to put our hands into that mud. We should not hesitate to do so if necessity were shown, for it may sometimes he the duty of a journalist, even at the cost of decency, to vindicate some personality from a grievous wrong, or to assert some principle that had been publicly ignored. But with the conflict that is raging around the fame of the pastor of Plymouth Church we are glad to say we in this country have nothing to do ; we have no adequate means of forming a judgment about any of the charges that are bandied about with reckless levity, and we are well pleased to be dispensed from the duty of taking a side in an arraignment that has been poisoned with all the fury of faction. Mr. Ward Beecher may be a free- lover, or the seducer of Mrs. Tilton, or the most calumniated of mankind, for any opinion we have to give except this, that as yet there is no tittle of trustworthy evidence against Mr. Beecher except Mr. Beecher's own,—a letter of remorse, for which, he says, he can thoroughly account. But the method of dealing with the -alleged offence of an eminent public man which the Americans have chosen is worth a little consideration. It is not such as we -should be likely to see generally resorted to in this country, yet it would be mere Pharisaical vanity to assert that it is altogether incompatible with our habits of thought and our social conven- tions. It is a danger on the brink of which all countries that possess an unfettered Press are hovering, and there is no security against it except a resolute hardening of public opinion against the slightest and earliest signs of a tendency towards the abyss. The Americans have plunged into the miry and slimy flood with some- thing like frenzy, and it is hopeless to think that the national mind can come out of it unbesmirched.
" Trial by Newspaper" may be described as that method of :scrutinising the characters of public men and distributing praise or blame which is common, and indeed inevitable, in a demo- cratic community that resents all claim to domestic privacy as a restriction of public rights. In every country there is an inclina- tion to assert some such power of supervision over the private lives of eminent persons, but in societies where distinctions of -class are maintained the pretension is all but universally re- pudiated. Of course, if a scandal breaks out affecting the private character of some one on whom, for any reason, the world's gaze is turned, and if legal proceedings follow, there is no possibility .of preventing the publication of every detail connected with the matter. A prominence altogether dispropoitioned to its intrinsic importance is thus frequently given to some unpleasant or dis- creditable relation in which a distinguished personage may be in- volved; but in England, even when the law demands publicity, reasonable limits of inquiry and of comment are set by the very fact that public justice has taken the controversy in charge. Without the intervention of law, there is no excuse that would at present be admitted in this country for the open discussion and unauthorised investigation of a scandal implicating a man of -eminence. Whatever May be the imperfections of our legal -system, it does, to a considerable extent, secure a fair hearing for a man whose character is impeached, and its decisions generally govern the drift of public opinion. But the sort of trial to which Mr. Ward Beecher is now being subjected has no limita- tiona whatever ; it is confined within no bounds, by regard either f or truth, or justice, of decency. Gossip sits upon the judgment- seat, and every one is by turns, or sometimes at the same moment, judge and advocate, jury and witness, reporter, com- mentator, and executioner. Everything is evidence, and nothing is one whit better evidence than another. The columns of a hundred journals are open for the reception of a limitless mass of matter, Which may have no other relation of relevancy to the charge that is being tried than the caprice or the cunning of the editor who contrives to connect it with the exciting topic of the day. There is no arrangement, no balancing of testi- mony; public opinion is formed upon isolated statements of fact, or more often upon mere statements of impressions, and day after day each new assertion of this kind, dragged out of its relation to the rest of the story, gives a footing for a new movement of the public mind. The Newspapers surrender themselves without scruple to the task of satisfying the craving of the public appetite, and in their competitive ardour they soon lose sight of the in- terests of truth and justice. In a short time, too, almost every person in the motley jury of millions, which is the self-constituted tribunal that takes cognisance of the cause, loses what little of the judicial spirit he may have started with. Everybody forms a theory, and out of the mass of relevant and irrelevant testimony is able to put together a statement of the case that will square with his theory. A good deal of this was seen among ourselves in the course of the Tichborne litigation, but this speculative method of doing justice was wholesomely held in check by the judicial direction of the proceedings, and the authoritative de- termination of the facts that was to be expected from the jury. The absence in "trial by newspaper " of any tests of the relevancy or the trustworthiness of the evidence adduced makes it next to impossible to attain the truth in this way ; or if one man chances to reach certainty thus, his next neighbour, arguing from different evidence differently presented, and following a different line of reasoning, is pretty sure to reach a different conclusion. So, in any case, the probabilities of injustice are multiplied. But a worse sort of injustice is still more likely to follow from the enormous disproportion of the penalty compared with the offence. Trial by newspaper' exercises no discretion in its punishments. It either acquits by acclamation—and this it does seldom—or it inflicts upon the accused "a stain like a wound." Such a stain, once flung upon the character of a great leader of men, or a revered public teacher, is almost ineradicable ; if undeserved, it is a calamity of the most deplorable kind, for it not only paralyses a force that might be powerful for good, but it generates a canker- Mg distrust of goodness itself, and a scoffing joy over the humilia- tion of what seemed to be goodness.
This is one, and only one, of the demoralising effects that would flow from the universal adoption of Trial by Newspaper. The direct contamination of the offensive details with which the American Newspapers fill their columns is bad enough, but the exultation of base souls and narrow minds in the fall and trampling under foot of some character that typified a loftier ideal of morals, or a wider sweep of intelligence, than the creeping ethics or the purblind mental vision of " the herd can tolerate,—this is a disease which strikes more dangerously and deeply into the constitution of a community than a mere appetite for literary garbage. The same ungenerous instincts that delight in crying " How are the mighty fallen ! " make themselves mani- fest also in a cruelty exulting over the exhibition of domestic tortures, of moral anguish, of the bitterest hatreds, and the foulest treasons. We do not desire to diminish by a single jot the severity of that punishment, which is the heaviest and most effective that can be applied to offences against public morals, the penalty of publicity ; but the manner in which the penalty should be applied, and the limitations necessary to minimise the de- moralising effect upon the lower thought of the community, seem, in the United States, at any rate, to require not a little revision.
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