THE FRENCH PRESS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 701, 21 April 1852, Page 4

THE FRENCH PRESS.

[From Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal.] The newspaper, that political weather-cock—-that moral barometer—that intellectual telegraph of civilised life—vaiies, like its producers and consumers, in form and features, according to the locality in which it flourishes. In Turkey it is an infant, in Russia and Austria it is a slave ; in Italy it is a dwarf, in Spain it is a muffled desperado; in Northern Germany it is a pipe : laugh not, we beseech you ! — a pipe always puffed at, always going out, and always being lighted anew. Again :in America it is a prizefighter, and in California it is — a first-rate speculation. But in England it is a manufacturer, while in France everybody knows it is a soldier to the backbone.

Generally speaking, in England a newspaper is at bottom an investment of capital; in France it is more essentially a defensive and offensive engine a sort of intellectual catapult or balister for throwing hard words and pointed invectives at the leaders of the enemy. In England a paper abuses a man on principle, and strictly as a matter of business ; in France it is passion that furnishes the powder, and hope of revenge the bullet to an editorial charge. Your Briton uses his artillery systematically, and spares his ammunition ; your Gaul loads to the muzzle of his gun, and cares little if he burst bis barrel in the explosion. Your venal journalist in England is a sturdy speculator—a rnan who knows bow “to make a book," and “ hedge ” scientifically ; in France he is a reckless soldier of fortune—a condottiere, a brigand. In England it is the journal as a house of business that succeeds ; in France it is the man, the leader of a party, who triumphs. In England the proprietor is rarely editor; in France the editor is generally proprietor. In England newspapers profess to represent, in France they pretend to form, public opinion. In England the press wears a mask ; in France it displays a cockade. An English journal utters the ideas of a class or a party ; a hrencn journal proclaims the sentiments of a man or a clique. The English press forces the ruling powers to pacific submission ; the French press conspires their downfall and destruction. The Englishman warns, the Frenchman threatens. Lastly, in England the unsuccessful speculator becomes bankrupt; in France the unlucky redacteur gels shot. The former is ruined by the capital, the latter killed by the bullet of his rival.

In other respects the contrasts between the two presses are equally striking. The English press is free, yet preserves almost invariably a certain tone of moderation and conventional politeness ; the French press groans under the most absolute bondage, being subject to fines guaranteed by the deposit of a large cautionmoney for a daily paper a thousand pounds, which, if diminished by a fine, must be made up again before the reappearance of the journal—and to seizure by the police. It is under the most arbitrary regulations as to sale. For example, no liberal paper is allowed to be sold in the streets where the monarchical prints are permitted to hawk their treason against the Republic unmolested. Such inconsistency under a republican government appears almost incredible ; nevertheless there is not an inhabitant of Paris, of any party, who will not bear witness to the fact. Yet the Evenement, a republican evening paper, has a larger sale than ail the journaux de soir of the reaction put together. It has a splendid office on the Boulevards, nearly opposite the Chaussee d'Antin—a luxury in which none of its opponents indulge. Again, La Presse, the great republican morning paper, is beyond all comparison the most popular and widely circulated journal in France. The indisputable success of these journals would lead a dispassionate observer to believe that republicanism has a broader basis in France than English journals usually admit; for, after all, why should the number of stamps consumed by the Presse and the Evcnemcnt- so far exceed that used by any other morning and evening papers, unless there existed in various parts of the country a republican class of readers to subscribe to them ? Again : any one who will take the trouble to inquire on the Bourse at Paris, will find that shares in La Presse are at a considerable premium, while those of nearly every royalist and imperialist journal are at a fearful discount. These simple facts, which are stated quite independently ol all political views, are worthy of remark, as they afford a cluo to estimating the present condition of our neighbours, not to be found in the passionate polemics of opposing factions. Notwithstanding the restrictions above alluded to—to return to cur point of contest—the French press indulges in the most menacing and inflammatory attacks upon men, ministries, and parties ; and, though in England the anonymous

system prevails, while in France every article is now signed (by law) with the name of its writer, personality in French journals runs much higher* than in our own prints. Another curious difference : in France there* is no duty on advertisements; yet that vast engine of traffic is there in its infancy compared with its gigantic expansion in England, where so> onerous a tax is levied upon every announcement of our wants and wishes. But, indeed, what is. trade in France compared with trade in Great Britain ? What idea have the monopolists and pedlars of that young Republic of the burning fever of competition which drives the golden current through the veins of British industry and enterprise ? France is following rapidly in our footsteps. She is already the second commercial state in Europe, and far m advance of all others in wealth and prosperity. Let, however, the following statistics, taken from a recent work on political comparative anatomy, convey some notion of the gulf which still separates the two countries iu a financial and progressive point of view !—•

Great Britain, it is calculated, has an income of about £550,000,000. Her taxes are about £50,000,000, or one-eleventh of her total revenue. France has an income of £320,000,000. only, with a taxation of £70,000,000, or more than one-fifth of her total revenue.-f- That is to say, France produces rather more than one-half what Greet Britain produces, and is taxed morethan doubly in proportion to her means !

To return to the advertisement department of the press—a department so important with us, so insignificant in France. At a rough guess we should say that there are at least one hundred times as many advertisements annually printed and published in London as in Paris. From this conscientious guess the reader may form some dim notion of the vast disparity between the two countries in this particular walk of literature. It is impossible to estimate the effect of the abolition of the naturally-detested advertisement duty in this country, which would put us in this respect on a level with the French, Probably, if our hypothesis be at all near the mark, that the number of British advertisements is now as a hundred to one in France, the ratio would not. then fall much below one thousand 1

As a sort of counterpoise to its political bondage, the stamp on a French newspaper is only oue-half that imposed in England, and paper duties are unknown. Hence arises a further important distinction between the press of France and that of her island neighbour. There are several daily newspapers published in Paris edited and contributed to by the most distinguished men of the day, the price of which is only two sous,, or one penny the number. Three sous is the price of the more expensive journals. Their sale is of course proportioned to their price, and their influence consequently much more extended than in England, where a daily paper is a luxury absolutely forbidden to the poorer and working classes. Hence the French, as a nation, are much farther advanced in political knowledge, right or wrong, than the English ; and far more excited and impatient on the subject of reforms which the dominant class—that is to say the bureaucracy—naturally delay and oppose hy every means in their power. Now in France at least one adult in ten is either a soldier, a placeman, or a police spy. No. wonder that the revolution sits en permanence in the brains of French philosophers, ami the hearts of French poets and patriots, when a tenth of the population consume more than a fifth of the total revenue of a country in which the result of an equal division of property would give about sevenpence J a day to every citizen shareholder. Thus the want of abuses to attack or propose remedies for is not one of the misfortunes of a French journalist, and newpapers flourish accordingly.

On the other hand, the great, unstamped press, which in England does so much for the education and civilization of the people, is entirely unknown in France, owing to the police restrictions thrown round everything connected with print and paper in that republic of contradictions. The place of these amusing and instructive periodicals is feebly supplied by the feuilleton of the daily papers (weeklies are rare—they suit not the feverish progress of events in a revolutionary state.) In these are published tales, literary and dramatic ciiticism, and articles of various kinds by the belletristic writers of France. But as the novela of Alexander Dumas absorb the greater portion of lhe feuilletons of the best circulated journals, they offer small field either for literary aspiration er for popular instruction. However, all classes in France are at present so busy seeking what they call a solution in politics, that they do not perhaps feel very keenly the want of lighter nutriment for their minds on the one hand, or more enduring literature on the other,

The writers of French journals are simply all the men of note and talent in France, who rarely fail to defend with their pens in a newspaper the principles they have advocated with their lips in the House of Assembly. Even the very subs and penny-a-liners, as we should call them in England, are mostly ambitious though penniless young adventurers, whose fortune it is not often easy to prophesy. Their boldness of invention, when a corner is to be filled up at all hazards by an extempore "canard,” or “duck,” as it is termed, is truly admirable. We were much amused by reading in a French evening paper the other day how, owing to some egg-shells being thrown down in the street an unfortunate cabhorse fell down, and his feet sliding out in opposite directions, broke all four legs on the spot. “ The knacker,” continues the duck-maker “ was humanely sent for, to put the poor animal out of its agony.” Where upon follows a profound moral reflection on the wickedness of throwing egg-shells into the street, which to more confiding readers must have proved highly edifying and commendable.

* Analogies and Contrasts, or Comparative Sketches of France and England, by the author of Revelations'of Russia, &c. I The taxation of France has been since increased. Let us hope that by some mysterious process her revenue has increased in proportion. + . Proudhon calculates seventy.five centimes—a fraction beyond sevenpence per head per diem.