THE PRESS OF NEW ZEALAND.

Marlborough Express, Volume IV, Issue 202, 6 November 1869, Page 7

THE PRESS OF NEW ZEALAND.

Blessings on the hon. Mr. Scotland. We have not the honor of knowing anything of this honorable member of the Legislative Council of New Zealand, beyond the fact that he is making an attempt to do away with one of the anti-newspaper Acts of the Stafford Ministry. But for this we give him our blessing. The Stafford Ministry carried on a more embittered, although a less expensive war against the newspapers than against the savages. And in the course of this warfare they bethought them of bringing law to bear against these enemies of theirs —persons of low degree, a a. Colonel Haultain was pleased to call them. It, however, came to little. The Government was willing to wound, but afraid to strike, and so the uncalled for legislation ended in simply extracting a few fees from newspaper proprietors in the Colony, leaving the Acts themselves no better than pieces of waste paper. But here they are —an indication of the relationship which existed between the late Government and the Press —and the sooner they are gone the better. We do not venture for a single moment

to say that the Press of New Zealand is what its friends would like it to be. Whenever it becomes personally malicious and malevolent whenever it attacks private character and interferes in private business —on all occasions when it lies and falsifies (and unfortunately there instances of all this not far to seek) —the Press is a great evil and not a good. But what we hold most strongly is this : that these miserable exhibitions are not to be put down by law or police. In every department, in this department more especially, we are getting very ready to carry law beyond its proper province, and the effect is that we are tending to weaken all legal authority, and to discourage and enfeeble the use of those moral agencies which are the best, and indeed the only true means of social and moral reformation. So long as public opinion likes or at least laughs at attacks on private character, and intermeddling with private concerns, so long will there be found persons connected with the Press ready to please their depraved taste ; and not law, but better education, and a purer standard of morals, will bring the thing to an end. It must go on meantime; it is weary waiting, more especially when mischief is being done, but the thing will have its day and die, as other nuisances have done before it. The Press of the United States, which used to be a bye-word and a reproach, is gradually rising to the dignity of its position, and so it will here and elsewhere. In writing thus, we shall not be understood as advocating mealy-mouthedness on the one hand, or shelter from the law of libel on the other. If the Press does not speak out fully and fearlessly all that it believes regarding public acts and public men, it may as well cease its functions at once. A dumb dog is a poor watch. At the same time, we do not doubt that the law of libel is necessary for the protection of private character. When not converted into a weapon of oppression by wealthy or unscrupulous men, this law, like other rather indefinite laws, has its benefits. How to hit the golden mean—the happy medium—is the grand question for the honest journalist. M. de Tocqueville is a leading French politician, and a man of affairs, so that his opinion on a subject of this kind should carry some weight along with it. Writing to Mr. John Stuart Mill (whose fastidiousness, by the way, would make all newspaper writing impossible), and referring to the proper tone of political and polemical discussions, the Frenchman observes that the same man speaks diffeiertly in a drawing-room, in a book, in Par 1 lament, to a friend, or to a thousand listeners; to an assembly of students, or to a crowd. His feelings and opinions remain intrinsically the same, but the way in which he brings them forward, the decree of animation, his choice and turn of expression are different. To one audience he tells the whole, to the other he leaves half to be inferred. He then more specifically alludes to the wide range per miss able in political journals, and to the responsibility of their conductors : “ A newspaper is a speech made from the window, to the chance passers-by in the street, amongst whom are to be found men of every degree of cultivation. To make your opinions reach their minds and affect them as you wish, some warmth is necessary; arguments must be obvious ; important truths must be mixed up with commonplaces ; and the picture must be highly colored, in order that it may be seen from a distance. How can this be helped ? It is the appropriate style. Those articles will certainly not be found among the works that posterity will read. They are intended to produce, by constant repetition, a temporary effect. I fear that your ideal of what the style of a newspaper should be is above all possibillity of attainment. Atleast, Iknow of no example in any party, or country, or age. I also think that you greatly exaggerate th j responsibility of the undertaking. Public men, especially if absent, are responsible only as to the general tone of the paper ; never for each separate article. I own that we do not do all that we want to do ; but political affairs must be treated in a political spirit, and not with the scrupulous refinement of private life. What combined movement ever fulfils the exact objects of the individuals engaged in it, each of whom does a little more, a little less, and a little differently than if he stood alone ? It is a necessary condition of all associations If you are resolved not to submit to it, you undoubtedly retain your individuality in act; but you can do none of the good you wish to others, and your object, in fact, becomes selfish.”

Such are the limits of the action and responsibility of political journalism, indicated by one of the most illustrious political writers of our time. With one or two reservations, we concur, at our humble distance, in them. We are not aware that this journal has ever exceeded the line thus drawn, and we would fain hope it never will. —Wanganui Chronicle.

AN HOUR WITH PROFESSOR HOLLOWAY. Mr. Editor, — Everybody has heard of Holloway’s Pills and Ointment, but everybody has not visited Holloway’s new establishment, in Oxford-street, London. Apart from any efficacy there may be attached to Holloway’s Pills or Ointment, the success of Holloway himself is in a great measure to be attributed to advertising in the press of nearly the whole world. Should any doubt exist in the mind of business men that advertising is of much avail, the newspaper canvasser could find no better text than pointing the dubious to view with wonder the accumulated wealth and business of Professor Holloway, whose likeness, in a neat frame, now lies on the table before me. The Professor is a man of years ; and in spite of his earnest business activity, and his constant energy of character in distributing his pills over the whole globe, he has stood the wear and tear of life well. Tall and robust. Professor Holloway possesses a shrewd, business-like countenance ; he is a man who earnestly believes in the principle he espouses. Having occasion last week to walk into Holloway’s leviathan establishment, I commented upon the wonderful business that was being carried on there, when at the request of the Professor, I was favoured with the opportunity of being escorted through all the departments of his house which may he described as palatial ; it is at a corner of New Oxford-street, and stands six stories high. Placing your foot on a marble step you enter what at the first moment would appear a branch establishment of the Bank of England, in such a place as Liverpool or Manchester. Marble pillars support the beams, and the desks are of solid mahogany and brass. Here between thirty and forty clerks are busily engaged in correspondence, &c. many of the letters being written in French, Italian, German, and Arabic. The methodical way in which the business is carried on is as pleasing as it is remarkable. As the most complete establishment in the world for newspaper files and proper checking, according to the 'limes, Holloway’s stands pre-eminent. The cashier is stationed at a high desk at the end of the office, and has before him drawers with layers of gold and silver, precisely similar to those in front of cashiers in banking firms. Your account being duly checked, the money is unceremoniously paid ; and your business being conducted with despatch you leave accordingly. On the first floor there were some like a hundred young girls placing the pills in boxes, and this department is presided over by a number of lady overseers. On tlie same floor 1 observed the label-fixers, and further on two ladies who are engaged in looking over all the papers, to see that the advertisements are properly inserted ; there were two, because one revises the work of the other. Ascending to the next floor you enter the stationary and printing departments. Here are all the small and large bills, so well known to the public eye, judiciously arranged, while in another room they are directed for the different agents, to every town and village that boasts of a druggist’s shop. On the next floor you enter the news rooms, where are kept, bound in file, all the foreign and colonial papers. “I suppose you do a large trade in Australia ?’’ I remarked to the gentleman who showed me over the premises, “ One would think,” said he, “ from the enormous consumption of our pills in Australia and elsewhere, that the people lived on them.” This newspaper file-room is a model place, and to me, as you may suppose, afforded intense interest. Upstairs again, and yon enter the immense store-rooms, where thousands if not millions of boxes of pills and ointment are to be seen arranged in immense racks and cases. This number, I was told, was replenished from week to week. We then descended the magnificent staircase, and passed the Professors suite of rooms. Passing by the chief office I found myself with the guide in the basement. Here are the immense packingrooms for the dispatch of the medicines to the home and foreign markets. Immediately underneath a portion of the pavement of Oxford-street is made the wonderful secret medicine. But I must not forget the pill-making room, where there is a machine continually at work for making the pills; lumps of pill-mass are put in at the top, and at the bottom they roll out by thousands, the orthodox weight and shape; so that from that machine, and from the bands of those dapper little men who superintend it, come all the wonderful pills of Holloway, who prescribes for —and, shall I add, allays the physical pains of—the whole world ! Yours truly, Antiquarian. —Sussex Herald, June 12, 1869.