DECLINE OF THE TIMES NEWSPAPER.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 120, 14 December 1858, Page 4

DECLINE OF THE TIMES NEWSPAPER.

(From St. James' Ghronxle.) It is amazing what an amount of gullibility there is in what is called " the public," meaning thereby the shallow politicians of pot-houses, and the small-brained disputers in taverns and omnibuses, whose tongue, like the clapper of a bell, only proclaims the hollowness of their head. " What says the Times to-day?" is the first question with such, -and, from sheer inability to t! i ik, they take their opinions as they take their coats from their tailors, ready cut and ready made, the Times, like a skilful tailor, taking care to fit the cloth to the fool's back. Only the other day the 'Times led almost every person in London to put his handkerchief to his nose as he crossed the bridges of the metropolis lest he should inhale the poisonous smell of the Thames. Now, the sensible thing, we think, to have done would have been to have told them to keep their mouth shut as well, and to hold their breathe, till they got across the river; for what possible use could it be to hold their noses if they inhaled the same thing at their mouths ? But thus it is that thousands may be led by the nose. And yet there are some, besides those who wish to see themselves as in a masquerade, who read the Times. Some read it to tremble as others, read it blindly to admire. Talk of tyranny, there is not a more ruthless tyranny under the sun than that which the Times exercises over the mind of England. The despotism of Napoleon over the French people is nothing to it. It is the dictator to Parliament —it overawes the Sovereign, and being the great Juggernaut of the press, it crushes all its own worshippers who are so foolish as to put themselves in its way. All are not fools and asses, except the Times, and those who swear by it, though the Times says so. It accuses the Emperor of the French of tyranny, because he restricts the publication of what is inimical to himself; and yet the Times exercises a ten times severer restriction upon what shall be allowed to be heard or read by its readers. The degree to which the suppression of facts or occurrences is carried by the Times would perfectly astonish the English people, if it could be all revealed. It was said of old, that truth was to be found at the bottom of a well; but that statement, when modernised, and stript of figure, would stand thus :—" Truth is to be found at the bottom of the waste-paper basket of the Times." The worst of it is there is no means of drawing it up; and he who should descend this well for the purpose would be sure to get drowned. But happily, as we said before, the Times is fast losing its ground. The Standard, as ably written as it, and other penny papers, are fast superseding it. Its days are numbered as the "leading journal." It must be content henceforth to take its place as what diplomatists call a " secondrate power" in the great community of literature; for people are becoming very generally convinced that there is as much truth as point in the following description of the Times: — " True to its name, and in its empire strong, The Times is always right, yet always wrong: It leads, yet follows; it obeys, yet rules. And those it bullies while, it these befools."