• OFFICIAL JOURNALISM.
THE newspapers of Jamaica publish a circular despatched from the Colonial Office on the 20th of August, which affects directly or indirectly every man in the employ of the British Government. Some official, it would seem, in some one of the forty odd colonies, has been " connecting himself with a news- paper" in an inconvenient way, whereupon the Colonial Office issues a circular laying down the rules under which alone officials can be permitted to " furnish articles" to any journal whatever. These rules are in the aggregate new, they are diametrically opposed to those now in force in Great Britain, and they threaten to deprive the colonists of their best political teaching, and the colonial officials of the last trace of intellectual liberty. Indeed, it is difficult to believe that they are not, under all their moderation of phrase, intended to suppress the practice of official writing altogether. The employis are ordered, in the first place, always to sign their names to every article they may publish, under penalty of immediate " removal," whenever " anonymous writing is brought home" to them, and are then surrounded with a whole list of prohibitions. They may not discuss any " question which can properly be called political," an expression which covers anything from a reform bill to a parochial squabble about a new-pump, or " any measure of the Government," or " any official proceed- ing of its officers," or, in fact, any one of the subjects on which officials have special knowledge, or special habits of moderation. They may discuss subjects "of general interest," such, for example, we presume, as earthquakes, or angling, or the art of dress, or the latest scandal, or the habits of insects ; but there is a limit even to these very innocent recreations. There are journals in the colonies, it appears, which, "in commenting on the measures of Government, habitually exceed the bounds of fair and temperate discussion," i.e., of what the Government attacked thinks fair and temperate, and in such cases the Duke of Newcastle " expects all public servants to abstain from contributing any articles whatever to the columns" of such unhallowed papers. A Whig official, in other words, may not write in a Tory paper at all, and he may not write in any other paper anything on which he can be expected to have more know- ledge than other people.
It may be useful to point out how exactly these rules are opposed to the English practice. The popular theory that officials are in this matter as free as any other body of men is not precisely -correct. There is, so far as we know, no formal code on the subject applicable to all offices, but there exists a very stringent unwritten rule, which no official has for many years ventured to disobey. It is the precise opposite of that which the Duke of New- castle, we hope in a moment of carelessness, has been induced to sign. Under that rule any official, provided he does not betray official secrets, may write anything he likes in a public journal, may criticize any measure, and denounce any individual except his immediate chief, but he must not sign his name. And the reason for that restriction seems to all practical men most sound. So long as the official is unknown the facts and arguments he offers can only tend to increase the sum of the public knowledge and the clearness of public reasoning—an increase the more valuable, because officials are from habit addicted at once to accuracy and mode- ration. An article by an official is, with special exceptions, nearly certain to be more moderate than that of any editor, and quite -certain to be more cautious than that of any outside " contribu- tor." Such papers, written without passion, and from a rich full- ness of knowledge, have frequently assisted the public mind to form conclusions on points too complicated for the popular grasp, -or to bear with changes which jarred with old and unreasoning prejudices. Not to quote living instances, the cause of free trade would have suffered heavily had Mr. Wilson been silenced, nor would the colonies now have been ours had Sir William Moles- worth not been able to manure the public mind for the growth of his new ideas. But when the name is signed a new class of effects ensues. The influence of the facts and the arguments is swamped in that of the official position, and the article which of itself might almost have escaped notice becomes an official manifesto. If the writer defends his department the Government is held respon- sible for his opinions ; if he attacks it the opinion of the subordinate -can be quoted against that of his superior, and coherent action is at an end. So stringent is the rule, that a Cabinet Minister, not many years ago, prohibited the republication of a series of articles written by an official, and with the drift of which the Minister himself coincided. For years past, therefore, while officials of every grade, from Cabinet Ministers to colonial clerks, have contributed regularly to London periodicals, adding immensely at once to the power and the conservative character of the press, no official has ever distinguished himself by public defence or attack of any particular measure. If in Parliament, he speaks in his place, if out of it, under the shield of the journal in which he appears to the public a mere thinker or ordinary partizan.
This practice at home has been one of the many causes which have given to English journalism that character of restraint and, so to speak, of statesmanship, in which Continental papers are so deficient, and it is in the colonies even more beneficial. Society there is smaller, the differences of opinion are more bitter, the -tendency to savage personal criticism is more distinctly apparent. To allow an official to write in his own name upon political questions would be, in fact, to allow him to become the centre round which all the bitterness of colonial society would concentrate itself. No chief, whatever his fortitude, could in so limited a society bear criticism from his subordinate, while the
" services " would not endure a public defence of their chief which they would consider a petition for swift promotion. The argument against signed articles seems, under such cir- cumstances, final; but to prohibit official writing altogether is often to leave the half-instructed masters of the situation. In many colonies it is only the officials who know the real bearing of any public events, who have before them the data for any but the most precipitate decision. The "connection of the officials" with newspapers is, therefore, of the highest value in informing opinion, and preventing those panics to which a colonial public is so un- accountably liable. So keenly is this felt that the colonial governors, in every slight emergency, break through their own rules, and encourage official and anonymous journalism in the interests of moderation. The result is to release all who are on the Government side from any fear of the " re- moval" threatened by the Colonial Office, while all those who oppose it are liable to a punishment which they regard as the extreme of injustice. It is not in human nature to submit to a rule so partially applied, and the consequence is an evil which is often very considerable. The official does not write, but he " inspires," that is, he gives the colonial editor information on which to base a paper of his own. The journalist has no responsi- bility, and by training no inclination to reserve, and an article therefore appears in which all the facts are visibly official, while all the drift is that of the writer, and the administration stands suspected of purposes it does not avow, and ideas which it does not entertain. That officials should not be editors seems fair, for they have sold their time to the State, but to stop them from writing is to deprive the colony of the best means it possesses of obtaining the political education in which the colonies are as yet so deficient. It is possible, of course, to avoid part of this mischief by establish- ing colonial Moniteurs ; but the system often recommended by officials is usually found impracticable. The articles in a Moniteur have too much weight, and their writers become in a free atmo- sphere too eager for purely literary victory. In that contest they who perform in fetters can never win the game, and they are com- pelled in the end to confine themselves to those bare statements of fact, official despatches, and Government memoranda which we find in most gazettes. The difficulty is only pushed one step back, and the Government forced once more either to leave, the public ignorant, or to break in its own interest all the rules with which the colonial clerks have tried to fetter discussion. The latter is the course invariably followed, and the only effect, therefore, of this despatch will be to make it a little more difficult, and much more dishonourable for officials to do a perfectly expedient thing, which all the while they are wholly unable to restrain themselves from doing. That is not, even for the Colonial Office, a triumph of administrative skill.
Previous page
