The English papers, with all their expensive organisation, fail to
cover the whole field of politics. We never, for example, bear anything of what is going on in India, except through the Times' weekly telegrams, whicll are decidedly thin, and, as regards Burmah, misleading. For South America, too, we are dependent upon Reuter, who only mentions events, and a correspondent in Lisbon, who is informed, one would think, only by persons of strong prejudices. Nothing like a history of the recent difficulties in Brazil has ever appeared ; nobody knows what the political position in Buenos Ayres really is ; and there has been no intelligible account of the cause of quarrel between the Milian President and his Congress. The facts of the insurrection are reported after a fashion, but its causes are hidden in a motiveless and apparently unintentional silence. The oddest part of the thing is that, though millions of British property must be at stake, private .correspondents are as reticent as the makers of bulletins, who no doubt are more or less under coercion. Does no one send home full accounts, or are the writers' friends afraid to publish them, or do the newspapers refuse such interesting matter P As far as we can see, President Balmaceda is being beaten very badly, but that is only an induction from the fact that the insurgents are approaching Santiago, and that the President, alarmed by heavy desertions, is increasing military pay.
Previous page
