THE NEW PENNY PAPER.

WE congratulate the Liberal party on a resolution which the proprietors of the Daily News have this week announced to the world. From Monday next that journal, which, with some

grave defects to be pointed out presently, is the most consistent

exponent of Liberal principles to be found in the London daily press, will be sold for a penny, and thus brought fairly within the reach of the new constituencies. They want a new Liberal paper

taxes on knowledge. It was asserted, and in part believed, that the new penny press would be immoral in tendencies and revolu- tionary in politics ; that it would extinguish the weekly press altogether ; that it would change the British journal from a col- lection of essays into a collection of snippets of news ; that it would centralize journalism in London, where alone penny papers could be expected to pay ; and that it would speedily kill out the dear and " therefore more respectable" daily papers ; and scarcely ono- of these anticipations has been fulfilled. The Penny Press, so far

from being immoral, is, as a whole, decorous to purism; and if it does not uphold a very high standard of ethics, never lowers for a moment the banner of "respectability." It carries carefulness of speech, as a rule, to the verge of imbecility, oue journal declining to quote a speech made by Mr. Henley in the House of Commons, which had in it a trace of the broad humour of the last century, quite

harmless, if slightly coarse, and most of the remainder printing the word Hell as if it were spelt with a capital H only. So far from being revolutionary, the penny press has drifted towards Conservatism of a slightly contemptible kind, and prostrates itself before the Throne iu abject adulation. One penny journal said the other day that the winds of heaven would not blow roughly

on a tree because the Qaeen had planted it ; another maintains that the Sovereign's presence makes the trade of London ; and a

third actually printed the telegram reporting the attack on the Duke of Edinburgh before that which announced the storm of Magdala. The weekly press, though compelled to change its form.

entirely, and its function in great part, has become more powerful

than ever, addressing editors and members rather than ordinary readers ; and, on the whole, better deserves its power. The hope,

formulized, if we are not mistaken, by Mr. Cobden, that articles would give place to telegrams has been entirely disappointed, and new is the one department in which the London papers have materially fallen off. Their reports of all kinds, Parliamentary included, are less careful than of yore, their foreign correspondence grows thinner, and their ancient spirit in the collection of intelli- gence seems to have entirely died away. Even papers like the

Times and the Telegraph, with their really immense resources, do nothing in this direction for the public. 'rime was when the Times would have spent thousands to secure early details, say, of

the battle of Sadowa ; but now the Press resigns itself to M. Reuter, whose agents, to speak plainly, know nothing about politics, have not the faintest conception of what is important and what is

twaddle, and while the Scotsman prints every day a column of private telegraphic bulletins, the London papers give us the words

of an American declaration against national swindling—worth to Europe, say, 20,000,000/. sterling—twelve days after their official promulgation. As to centralization, the provincial journals,

after one shiver of fear and rage, accepted the change so heartily

that we have at this moment this unprecedented situation,—they beat their London rivals. We ask any competent Northern Member of Parliament to correct us if we err in saying that no

London penny daily can compare either in type, paper, leaders, or freshness and fullness of information with the Scotsman, the Leeds Mercury, the Manchester Guardian, or the Manchester Examiner. How they do it we have not an idea, but the fact remains that while the two most successful of the London peony

dailies are printed on paper which would disgrace an advertising shop if used for wrappers, these Northern papers are as readable as if they cost threepence, and as well printed as any papers, out of China, in the world.

Moreover, strange to say, most of the penny papers in London are not Democratic or even Liberal in sentiment. The provincial

journals are Liberal enough, most of them, and will exercise ulti- mately enormous county influence ; but of the two most successful London papers, one, the Standard, is avowedly Tory, and the other, the Telegraph, though Liberal in its party predilections—it be- spatters Mr. Gladstone with praise—is often anti-Liberal in tone, backed the South all through the American war, supports the Napoleonic regime with hearty cordiality, and has not a notion of hitting the public when the public has gone wrong. On the other hand, the single Radical penny daily, the Star, is about as wrong- headed in its policy as it is possible for a paper to be. It is as honest as the light, and has a right, of course, to its own convic- tions, but anything more exasperating to true English Radicals than to have the Star thrown in their faces it would be impos- sible to conceive. To be told that the Star's ideas are their ideas, that they are for peace at any price, for the abolition of the punishment of death, for anathematizing Bishop Colenso, for setting up the United States as an exemplar, for putting counties under boroughs, for fostering anarchy under pretence of Liberalism, is enough to make decent men swear without giving offence to angels. Truth must be spoken, even when it gives offence to the good, and in the whole range of English journalism there is not a paper which displays the inner spirit of English Democracy so little as the Star. The moral qualities of the English Radicals it has ; honour, fearlessness, and hatred of oppression, but it has not one of their intellectual ; is not national, is not imperialist, is not fiery, and is not independent in religious and ecclesiastical affairs. The Radicals who care to see their instincts represented as well as their principles are driven back on the Daily News, which, cumbered with a price too high for those who would have been its best supporters, with a proprietary which for years has not understood the value of news, and with a clientele honey- combed with ideas essentially Tory, has still set its back to the wall and fought the good fight against all manner of devils,—the devils of false refinement and plutocratic con- tentment, as well as the rest. The gallantry of its conduct. throughout the American campaign deserved the Victoria Cross of Journalism. It was nothing, comparatively, for us to stand up to the work—though we lost more money than we care to think about, and could publish a curious repertory of anonymous insult— for the class which reads the Spectator will read while it hates, but a daily paper in opposing a public furore stakes its very exist- tence. The Daily News staked it, and for years past has never, that we have perceived, hesitated on any question of princi- ple to go right in the teeth of its own ordinary supporters. It does this, too, without ever forgetting that it is English ; that the influence of Great Britain is a power on the side of good never to be lightly diminished ; that, to speak with brutal plainness, people are not to be kicked with impunity because they love freedom, justice, and fair play. If there is one thing more contemptible than spreadeagleism, it is that spirit of " humility " which will not assert a clear right because, forsooth ! the assertion involves a contest with powers before whom we are sometimes in the wrong. England was mad in its fondness for the South, but that was no reason why the British flag should be insulted on board the Trent. The Daily News has always recognized this truth ; has always seen that manliness and Radicalism are complements, not things contrary to each other ; has always repudiated, not heartily enough, but still distinctly, the accursed sentiment, " Perish, Savoy I" rather than England should spend cash. It has often, too, dared to face the artizans, when, as in the matter of strikes, they have been in the wrong ; and has disdained alike to run down Mr. Beales, or to find an ally in a mob bent chiefly on setting authority at naught.

For these reasons we welcome most heartily any increase in the popularity and influence of the Daily News; but this article has become so unconventional and will affront so many people, that we may as well tell the whole truth, and affront the remainder. There are reasons also why we do not welcome the probable success of the Daily News, reasons some of them common to the whole press, and some of them peculiar to itself. Like most of its contemporaries, with the partial exception of the Times, it lacks breadth of survey, neglects the Empire for London, ignores the Colonies, India, Ireland, Scotland, and the English counties far too much ; is insufficiently supplied with correspondence, and uses the telegraph wires with too little enterprise and spirit. These, perhaps, are defects of management on which it is scarcely our business to comment. It is, however, within the province of fair political criticism to say that the Daily News has one defect which immensely impairs its value as a representative of English Liberalism, a defect which we can completely characterize only by the single and artificial word Philistinism. It is always for the right, at any risk or loss, but it makes the condition that the right shall be also the respectable. It is always for freedom as freedom is understood in Islington, in respectable English circles with strong Protestant convictions, and a disposition to'believe that if men could not be sent to hell or heaven till after a trial by jury, that would be a perfect arrange- ment. It is always for the oppressed, except the oppressed be ideas. It is always for nationalities, but it demands, unconsciously no doubt but still demands, that the nationality should model itself on the English fashion ; that Irishmen should be grave and reasonable and slow of motion ; that Italians should work twelve hours a day ; that Germans should postpone sentiment to practical politics ; that Americans should delight in some other form of fun than whimsical exaggeration. It has little reverence for idiosyncrasy either in nations or individuals, and treats eccentricity as something which may be pardoned, but must be spoken of with mild regret. We question if the Daily News at heart—for every paper is an entity, and has a heart, and a wonderful fact it is, and the best answer we know to the pro- position that a Church or a State is only a collection of individuals —could sympathize with a people which held " getting-on" to be a rather contemptible occupation, and which fancied that man might do better than plough every day till he was too tired to think ; if it could realize life in ancient Greece, if it could appreciate the better side of the Parisian nature. It will fight heartily, some- times splendidly, if anybody oppresses said Parisian; but all the while it would prefer him to be more like a man of Islington or Camber- well, basing a life of the dreariest monotony on a few sound princi- ples and a few slightly stale ideas. There is a habit of keeping in a groove of thoughtabout theDady News which, considering the catho- licity of its contempt for all forms of oppression, and wrong-doing, and feebleness, is almost inexplicable, and which, we fear, will limit what might be a most beneficial influence. The workmen are not going to set up Islington as an ideal, any more than Mr. Matthew Arnold is. We read an article in the the Daily News, say, on an e'metete, or a military debate, or a speech in defence of the Irish Church with the sort of feeling with which we listen to some sermons. The article is almost invariably clear, decisive, and high-principled, and we know that the Daily News will stick to its line if right, whatever it costs ; or if wrong, say so candidly ; but still, if it would but recognize that there is another side, a world outside the Strand, a world which does not believe in demand and supply, and religious liberty and trial by jury, and conscription by hunger, and the principle that taxation without representation is tyranny, and the rest of the English beatitudes ; would just allow, for one moment, that English middle-class wisdom is not the end-all of human intellect, or even the perfected result of the experience of mankind ! There is a want of humour about the paper — not of wit, for its grave irony is some- times perfect—but of humour in its broadest sense, which is the more vexatious when we remember that with it the Daily News, as a penny paper, would be one of the most effective, as it will in any case be one of the most high-principled, allies the British Radical ever obtained.