M. RO U VIER ON BRIBES TO THE PRESS. A FTER
all, it is not so bad a world as we are some- times tempted to think it. Often enough, indeed, we have to grieve over merit unnoticed and labour un- rewarded. Men work hard and see no fruit of their toil ; they spend themselves in the service of others, and they get only a pittance in return. Naturally, when in such a mood, our thoughts turn to the ill-requited toil that makes so much of a journalist's life. We recall the pains that go to the making of articles and the collection of news, and then we remember the melancholy tales which Sir Algernon Borthwick narrates to the Institute of Journalists, or the woes of authorship as painted by Mr. Walter Besant. Yet we have dreamed of a different order of things, of a world in which a grateful public comes at frequent intervals to the feet of its guides, philosophers, and friends, and pours into their lap with ungrudging hand, not the bare purchase-money of a penny, or three- pence, or sixpence, but the generously calculated equivalent of all the good it has gained from its newspapers. In England, unfortunately, this is only a dream. The waking hour comes all too soon, and reveals the customary array of small coins. But it is something to know that, only twenty miles from our shores, this Arcadia really exists. There is a happy land not far away. In this paradise of journalism, £80,000 a year is given away for nothing. To the income of eighty editors there is added a thousand pounds. Perhaps it is forty who get £2,000 a year. Perhaps Fortune distributes her favours more widely, and it is one hundred and sixty that get £500 each. But it is all got—that is the point we wish to dwell on—for doing nothing, or almost nothing, for a word in season, more often perhaps for that golden silence in which great commercial enterprises grow up and prosper. We could hardly have believed, upon less trustworthy authority, that at no greater distance than France, the world of our dreams is a waking reality, that money does in fact come pouring in, with no questions asked, and no services to speak of exacted in return. We should have suspected a hoax, or thought that our informant had got his facts and his figures mixed. But we cannot dispute the word of the Minister of Finance, and M. Rouvier him- self owns to the expenditure, though, sad to say, he has urged its reduction.
We should never have known how much cause English journalists have to envy their French brethren, had not the affairs of the Credit Foncier come before the Chamber. There is no need to touch upon the circumstances in which this has happened. It is enough for our purpose that the inquiry disclosed payments made to journalists to the amount of £80,000. The question was raised on Tuesday by a Royalist Deputy, who seems to have been quite blind to the blessings which surround him. Possibly he is envious of advantages which he does not share ; at all events, he sees nothing to praise and everything to condemn in the system which allots to the Press a part of the profits of the Credit Foncier. His desire is to destroy the grace of the transaction by making all the details of it public. The Credit Foncier wishes to do good by stealth ; the newspapers it subsidises would blush to find it fame. But M. de Lamarzelle rubs, or tries to rub, the bloom off these innocent payments by a free use of such words as " puffing " and "extortion." To his rude, uncultured mind, there seems nothing but bribery or black-mail in a system which joins commerce and journalism by a golden link, and treats the world of investors as created for their joint benefit. Publish the list of these subsidised journals,' he cries. Let us see who it is that praises the Credit Foncier, or forbears to blame it. We shall know then what the Corn- pany gets for its outlay, what is the exact cost of the fair words in one newspaper, or the convenient absence of com- ment in another.' M. de Lamarzelle would do worse than rudely wake us from a dream,—he would destroy the reality just when we had learnt to know that it exists.
Happily, M. de Lamarzelle is not Minister of Finance, and M. Rouvier is. How different is the tone and temper of the judicious statesman, the man of affairs, the optimist who knows that whatever is is best ! I have no right,' he says, 'to drag these delicate matters before an unappre- ciative world. It is not our expenditure. All that the Government can do is to appoint a proportion of the directorate, and leave it to their wisdom to influence their colleagues in the direction of economy or liberality.' The result of this influence is seen in the figure, £80,000. M. Rouvier, as an individual, thinks this high, but, as a Minister, he will not interfere. Above all, he will not seem to condemn an innocent and possibly useful arrangement by publishing a list of the subsidised journals. The reason he gives for this refusal is novel and interesting. In France, it seems, the Press is regarded as an industry. It is part of the great productive system by which the country lives. As the vine-grower sells grapes, or the mill-owner cotton, so the Press sells the kindly praise, or the kindlier silence which at times is even more valuable than praise. Is the Government of the country to step in between the producer and the consumer ; to say that the newspapers shall not sell what is theirs to give or to withhold ; that the Credit Foncier shall not buy what the Directors think it will be to their advantage to possess ? This, in M. Rouvier's mind, would be to ignore the existence of customs peculiar to France; to make out Ministers wiser or more moral than the nation whose affairs they administer, and thus to con- travene the great democratic principle that Governments are the servants of the people. So, we say, M. Rouvier thinks, and so apparently think the 303 Deputies who voted the Order of the Day.
Looked at seriously, it is an odd conclusion for a Legisla- ture to come to. The commonplace English theory of the relation of City editors to commercial undertakings, is that it should be a relation of complete independence. In all countries, England included, this theory is falsified in particular instances. But the English public do not wish it falsified. They would like to believe that every newspaper expresses an absolutely unbiassed opinion, when it expresses any, on the merits of any concern whose affairs call for comment. If they were told that there are some newspapers whose good-will can be bought, they would like to know what newspapers they are. If it were discovered in the course of a Parliamentary investigation that this or that Company spent £80,000 every year in bribing newspapers, there would be an imme- diate demand for the names of the journals among which this vast sum was distributed. How is it that in the French Chamber a majority, a large majority, can be found to support the Government in refusing any such disclosure ? Many of the Deputies represent constituents largely composed of small investors ; and what can be more important to small investors than an honest Press criticism of the concerns in which they put their money ? Large investors are behind the scenes, and know without looking to the newspapers to tell them which undertaking is solvent, or which Company honest. But the small investor has no such opportunities. The Press is his only guide, and it might have been thought that the Deputy who represents him would, as he values his seat, do what he could to make that guide trustworthy. Yet apparently it is not so. Apparently the public are quite willing to be deceived ; they assume that this or that newspaper is to be trusted ; and even when they are told that, as £80,000 a year is distributed among editors, there must be some who are not to be trusted, they do not care to know which are the black sheep and which the white. Possibly this curious state of things may be traced to the same temper of mind that makes so many Frenchmen Protectionists. Their interest is all on the side of the producer, about the consumer they care nothing. As a business relation, the relation of the Credit Foncier and journalism is unimpeachable. Each is useful to the other. The one is willing to buy what the other is willing to sell. To permit, and if need be promote, mutual services of this kind, is business, by which, if any- body is hurt, it is only the unknown investor, who is too ignorant or too foolish to have any suspicion of the real genesis of the advice he follows.. But, after all, how is he worse off than the man who is forced to buy French grain, when foreign rice would suit him better ; or to drink wine made of native grapes, when imported raisins would give him a liquor he would like as well and pay less for ? The Promoter is as dear to the French Chamber as the Producer, and both need all the protection they can get.
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