The Prime Minister married his eldest daughter at Ha- warden
this day week, and said a few words of a strictly private character, in a party absolutely limited to the families of the bride and bridegroom, at the breakfast, which words some person, who, if his taste for reporting had been known, would certainly not have been there,, reported for an evening contemporary. Reports of speeches of this kind seem to us to outrage every principle of decency. if the Prime Minister could but be overheard at his daily prayers, they might just as well be reported as such a speech as that. Political life will become, what it long has been too much in the United States, abhorrent to all refined taste, if this sort of vulgar personal curiosity is permitted to drag into the public gaze all the private life of public men. The Press ought to be aware,—and we know no reason why the halfpenny Press should not feel this as strongly as the dearer papers, —that if public men once cease to have a" private life which is really private, they will be worth indefinitely less not only as men, but as statesmen.
Previous page
