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New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 36, 3 January 1874, Page 8

Louis Napoleon and the Puess.— 'J he method of influencing and controlling the press was regulated under the Empire by a special department, under General Fleury, the hero of the Coup d'J£tat. That h number of editors came daily lor their instructions is easily mteliigible — cela va sans dire But there was a section for reading and examining JHunals, French and loivign, and a special note was made of any profession of faith by public men, and a record kept of it. There was a section for publicity, under which a number of writers prepared, daily, outlines of articles, letters, suggestions and directions, &c , which were in-erted or made use of in upwards of a hundred journals. Editors and contributors were also found for journals, and sent from Fam to the country ; and assistance was given either in direct grants of money, or by paying the writer, or by purchasing a given number of each issue, which was sent direct from the office to a list of persons whom it was thought desirable to enlighten or influence. Journals, originally of slight importance, were often reorganised and made eerviceable instruments by these methods. But a more subtle and ingenious development of the system was the correspondence establishment with opposiiion papers. Persons were selected to write in a moderate and apparently candid style, answers to attacks in those journals. And the greiit agencies for circulating telegrams were iv habitual communication with the department, and colured their news discreetly under its direction. An arrangement was also made with journals in England, Germany, and Belgium, twenty in all, to publish documents and correspondence supplied to them. Paris papers like * Le Petit Journal,' which was professedly non-political, and had aa immense circul tion, were nmde serviceable by containing memoirs of ministers and their leading supporters, stories of the First Empire, statistics of French progress, &v. The piefects of dej artments furnished lists of persons to whom papers might be usefully cent.