The Government of India has, we fear, made a mistake
in its order placing all newspaper writers in any territory administered on its behalf, but not within legal "India," at the mercy of the administrative officer. The consent of the Agent is necessary to the existence of any newspaper ; he may withdraw it at any time; and any person disobeying the order may at once be expelled. The order is directed, it is said, against scurrilous papers which render administration in such States difficult, and stir up discontent; and nobody doubts the existence of an evil to be abolished. It could, however, have. been dealt with in a less arbitrary way. An administered State makes its own laws, Press laws included, and could make them, when circumstances required, sufficiently severe. The great addi- tion required to the ordinary law in such places, is punishment for false news "obviously intended to produce political excite- ment," and to such an improvement there would be no objection. Even a censorship would be more reasonable than the system created by the order, under which a native journalist may be rained at a blow for a statement or an article which he honestly believed to be tree or fair, but at which the Political Agent takes offence.
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