We must say we think the proprietor and conductors of
the Pall Mall Gazette have hardly received sufficient credit for their conduct in exposing the late financial editor of that paper and those who bribed him. As soon as they discovered the facts, they published them, stood the risk of formidable libel actions, and when "explanations" were offered, exposed their futility without mercy, and at the same time without exaggeration. That is a most creditable service, not only to the investing class, which is plundered remorselessly through fictitious " notices " of new under- takings, but to the general cause of public morality. If there is a grave new public danger it is that journalists, who in all transactions give the public its first cues, should be bribed to falsify or conceal facts. If they will lie for pay about companies, they will lie for pay about States, and we may have war and peace arranged in order to suit the speculations of invisible capitalists. Journalism will always be more subject than other professions to party influences, influences from newspapers buyers, and influences from intellectual prejudice; but it can, if it pleases, keep itself as clean of bribery as the Civil Service does. It is far better off.
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