THE New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1909. 'THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 6, 11 February 1909, Page 221

THE New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1909. 'THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.

LSEWHERE in our columns of this date (page 212) will be found a - brief but juicy correspondence between the Rev. Father Hickson and the New Zealand Times. _ This correspondence was telegraphed to the daily papers of the Dominion, but — for reasons, which . we do not profess to fathom, and which we can only surmise — it was telegraphed in so mutilated a form that its real purport and true inwardness were not brought home to the great bulk of the readers of the sebular press, Practically no idea was, for instance, given "of the coarse and illtempered attack by a non-Christian, on Christian faith and sentiment, out of which Father Hickson's protest arose. The reader will gather, from page 212 of this issue, someidea, but only some idea, of the manner -in which the faith and feelings of Christian people were lacerated by the Ingersollian revilings that stung and raved and raged through a good part of two columns of the New Zealand Times. Even the Managing Editor admitted' that ' writers should- at all times so couch their language as to avoid giving pain and offence ' (we > presume unnecessary and unprovoked pain and offence), and that tlie matter out of which Father Hickson' s protest arose was c vitiated by an intolerant attitude towards commonly-accepted theological views.' Which was putting the matter very .mildly indeed. Another and, perhaps, even more significant reticence in the telegraphed report of the correspondence was the mutilation of the extraordinary letter of the Managing Editor which brought the brief exchange to a close. -In this letter the Managing Editor placed before the world a statement of his principles of journalistic morality. It is a damning document — the' most amazing thing of its kind that has, perhaps, yet appeared even in the gutter-press ' -pf this or of any other country. In an able, clear, and high-minded editorial article (reproduced on page 212) the Times reads its Wellington contemporary a muchneeded lecture .on the Matter's fall from, true journalistic grace and principle. But there are other features in that hectoring document that call for notice. • ' 1. The law of the land -claims, and vigilantly exercises, the right of excluding from 'the shores and the homes of New Zealand large classes of "offensive publications. Father Hickson claims, for the ..Christian ministry, a 'right of a lesser though analogous kind^-the" right and duty of 'counselling ' those under their spiritual care 'as regards the literature which they should receive into, or reject from," their homes. The Lyttelton Times voices the sentiment of present and past times when it says that Father Hickson is ' perfectly within his rights ' in all this. But forth steps Sir Oracle, the Managing Editor of the New Zealand Times, and with all the confidence born of youth and

inexperience, declares ex cathedra that such a claim is arrogant and presumptuous and ' ill-advised.' We are all more or less acquainted with the joy-giving race of those who

' Know more of any trade b a hint Than those that have been brought up int.

The workaday world, however, treats them as it treats the Malaprops — namely, as one of the unconscious humors of life ,as one of the patches of local color in a dull, drab world. 'Even the youngest of us may make mistakes.' And the youthful Managing Editor of "the Neio Zealand Times may not, after all, know more about the duties of the sacred ministry ' than those that have been brought tip in't ' — despite his dictatorial dogmatism as to their relations to the matters of faith and morals -which are directly and immediately within their domain. They know the ground whereon they stand. And they will continue their ancient and honored — though (in the mind of the Wellington Managing Editor) arrogant and presumptuous and illad vised— f unction of- ' counselling ' their flocks against undesirable literature, whether that takes the shape cf the ' penny dreadful,' or the ' shilling shocker,' or the fleshly sty-philosophy of a Zola, -or newspaper attacks on Christian faith and feeling ■- couched in the language of the street-corner. We rather think, too, that the arrogant and presumptuous and ' ill-advised ' lavr of libel and the^ Offensive Publications Act will combine to prevent the New Zealand Times following to its logical issue the new code of journalistic ethics fornnilated "by its Managing Editor. Nay, we even think that the New Zealand Times will contrive to exercise in the future the arrogant and presumptuous and ' ill-advised ' liberty which it denies to the Christian Church, ..but which itself has abundantly followed in the past in its editorial and book-notices, columns — namely, the liberty of ' counselling ' its readers as to the sort of literature which they should or should not admit into their homes. Consistency . is called by some people a jewel — possibly because of its rarity among them.

2. Another of the philosophic gems- of the Managing Editor's last communication is the ' principle ' that no one (especially the clergy) is justified in ' counselling ' others as to what is to be accepted as ' true ' or rejected as ' false.' ' Such presumption,' says the Managing Editor, must be' 1 met with stern resentment,' for people nmst be left serenely ' to think and act for themselves.' Our prison population will rejoice with an exceeding great joy in the New Gospel thus preached to the world by the Managing Editor of the New Zealand Times. Christ and His Apostles, likewise His Church down through the course of the ages, have been exhorting people to accept what they held to be true and to reject what they held to be false; and the sacred message that they gave created the Christian liome and civilised savage and barbarian nations, and transformed the world. But, according to the New Morality of the Wellington Times, this was all a huge blunder, an ' ill-advised ' folly, an act of ' presumption ' to be ' met with stern resentment ' — f or people must not be ' counselled ' as ' what they shall accept j>r reject as true or false'; on the contrary, they must be left entirely to their own wits (or lack of wits), 'to think and act for themselves.' Christian and nonChristian clergy must therefore be gagged; State and other teachers must be hung on a sour apple-tree; the New Zealand Times and all our newspapers must be criss-crossed with the cat-o'-nine-tails for daring to suggest what is the ' true ' and what, the ' false ' view on Dominion finance, on the freehold v. leasehold agony, and so on — in fact, the clamorous advocate of ' freedom of the press ' pleads clamorously for the extinction of the last spark of that freedom. But . that is not all. The burglars, forgers, and manslayers in the Wellington prison must be forthwith liberated as the innocent victims -of an 'ill-advised' arrogance and 1 presumption ' which should be ' met with stern resentment.' Our criminal code must be entirely amended, for it is, root and branch, opposed to the new Philosophy of Youth. Yon beetle-browed burglar holds as ' true ' the doctrine that he is entitled to the cash, in the safe of the Wellington Times. He is, of course, moreover, entitled to 'think and act for himself.' And, "3lo doubt, 'the Managing Editor will, with smiling courtesies, ask him to be pleased to help himself. That colonial Bill Sikes is firmly convinced of his true right to plant a .twelve-inch blade between the sixth and seventh ribs of his Nancy. And, of course, he is quite entitled not alone to ' think,' but likewise to ' act ' as he pleases. And so on as regards the forger, the garroter, the.magsman, and the rest. Such is the New Gospel — Broad Arrow Brand. The Managing Editor may, of course, plead that he does not really mean all this. But his r words plainly do. And Managing Editors should have enough sense and education to mean what they say and say what they mean— even fourth-stan-

dard schoolboys are supposed to be capable of this small feat. U Uonnell examined his conscience whenever the London J^mes wrote a word of commendation of him. Father Hickson may well rejoice that he has not succeeded in winning the commendation of -the New Zealand Times, under the New Dispensation of the Broad Arrow,

3. Here is another of the sweeping dicta of the newcode of journalistic morality: 'The practice of modern journalism is to give the freest play to individual opinions in signed articles on any subject: There are sundry permutations j,nd combinations . of this idea. Here are two • Ihe newspaper which is capable of the greatest service to the community is that which freely opens its columns to a free expression of public opinion on all subjects'and again: 'No man who has the courage of his convictions,should be denied the expression of them in the public press. - (The italics are ours). There are a few remarks to make in connection with this section of the new Broad Arrow Ethics : (1) The Catholic and other clergy are denied the freedom of thought and action which (by necessary implication) is granted to the criminal classes. (2) If ' the freest play ' of expression is permissible in a newspaper on all subjects ' and 'on any subject,' and if it is deniable to no person,' by what right do our laws of libel restrict such freedom? By what right does our criminal law prosecute— and successfully prosecuter^certain journals that act upon this supposed right and fine or imprison not merely their publishers, but even their vendors? And if universal freedom of expression belongs by right to the press, by what right does the moral sense of the community restrict it by baling (as it does) certain rather 'free' gutter-rags out of every decent home and hand? And if such unlimited freedom is a sacred right of the press, what justification -is to be offered for our laws against slander ? Moreover, if such freedom (or rather license) is allowed to the pen, why not to the tongue? Why close the draw-ing-room of the decent rich, or the parlor or kitchen of the decent poor, against degenerates whose tongues are laden with the foulness of the damned? Why prosecute the hoodlum for bawling out at ladies and children ' obscene language m a public place ' ? Are not theso lewd fellows of the baser sort also protected by the sheltering cloak " of the Managing Editor's Sacred 'Right' 'to think and act for themselves' as they please, irrespective of the rights and feelings of others, for no such limitation or restriction is even suggested ?

N There are probably few people as good as their good principles or as bad as their bad. We acquit the -Managing Editor of the New Zealand Times of" a conscious and deliberate exposition of the Broad Arrow Code of Ethics which lies plain and clear upon the surface of his letter or February 1. But we acquit his heart only at the expense of his head. He has fallen into a familiar quicksand that besets young and uneducated writers: he has neglected his categories, and indulged in broad and sweeping assertion where large classes of restrictions are demanu °i. And— again- after the fashion of such writers —he has taken care of the sounds and let the sense take care of itself: he has failed to realise the. full force and logical content of his thundering sentences. Age arid reading and experience will, we hope, mellow in his case the mental rawness of his present ideas and the enthusiastic positiveness of his present speech. He will then learn that (m the words of the non-Catholic philosopher Thomas Hill Green) ' the good-will is free, not the bad ' ; that true liberty is (m Coleridge's words) 'a universal license to do good ; that (as Boetiu3 said twelve centuries ago) 'to be obedient to justice js the very height of * liberty.' All these ideas of liberty are crystallised in various degrees in the laws and social usages of every civilised lajid. True, unfit members must be tolerated in every community, and the law should not force people to do all that they ought in reason and conscience to do; for moral duties involve interior dispositions, which the. law cannot enforce; and legal compulsion, if carried beyond the proper Hounds, might induce atrophy of moral dispositions. The civil law imposes, for the public good, large classes, of restrictions upon freedom of speech and pen. Other and" further restrictions are imposed by the 'social virtue,' by the moral sense of the community, and regard for its best interests. It is not easy, if it is possible, to lay down broad and general rules covering the whole of this vexed question of freedom of expression. Sane and sober argument we can understand; but it may safely be said here that it is not 'playing the game' to yell either on street-corner or hi the columns of a. newspaper in a Christian community, siich coarse verbal outrages upon Christian sentiment, such -vulgar abuse and innuendo, as those which aroused the jusfc and" indignant protest of Father Hickson. Such unprovoked and blatant offence would not be, tolerated for. .a moment in. any "mixed social gathering; and it is none the -less "offensive because

its author is known. ( All this is not to be met with yellow gloves and mincing accents, nor pushed at with toying thrusts of a sword of boiled leather. And we trust that, in' the discharge of this sacred duty towards their flocks, those who (in Father Hickson's happy phrase) ' are privileged to be called Christ's shepherds ' will ever ' ' show themselves alert and no hirelings.'