Mr. Chamberlain took the chair this year on Saturday at
the annual dinner of the Newspaper Press Fund, and made an amusing speech, on part of which we have commented elsewhere. He said that no one now would venture to proclaim himself "outside the circle of the well-wishers of the Press," which has become interwoven with our lives. If he were sent to prison the thing he would miss would be his chosen paper, though which that paper was must remain his secret. The newspaper gave us facts and ready-made opinions, and though the facts were sometimes inaccurate,—he had himself read detailed accounts of a Cabinet never held,—the mass of the information was extraordinarily correct. With- out the Press there would be no speeches, and who could con- template without horror a speechless world? The journalists were becoming politicians, entering the House, and even the Cabinet; and that would be good for them, but he sometimes wondered if the politicians would make good journalists. Certainly Lord Rosebery would make a good editor of a comic paper, and Sir William Harcourt might find editing a daily paper a more genial task than leading the House of Commons. And then the speaker burst into the regular rapturous eulogy of the Press, the one authority which always waxed while others waned,—a statement we do not. believe. The waxing authority just now is that of the agitator with a command of sympathetic flattery for the great cor- poration of the poor. The speech was a very clever one, and Mr. Chamberlain struck out sparks with his hammer, instead of crushing the iron.
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