of Parliament.  It is not altogether easy to weigh and measure with this degree of precision.  But what is certain is that there are journalists on both sides in politics to whom the public looks for original suggestion, and from whom leading politicians seek not merely such mechanical support as they expect from their adherents in the House of Commons, nor merely the uses of the vane to show which way the wind blows, but ideas, guidance, and counsel, as from persons of co-equal authority with themselves.  England is still a long way from the point at which French journalism has arrived in this matter.  We cannot count an effective host of Girardins, Lemoinnes, Abouts, or even Cassagnacs and Rocheforts, each recognised as the exponent of his own opinions, and each read because the opinions written are known to be his own.  But there is a distinctly nearer approach to this as the general state of English journalism than there was twenty years ago.

Of course nobody of sense supposes that any journalist, however independent and however possessed by the spirit of his personal responsibility, tries to form his opinions out of his own head, without reference to the view of the men practically engaged in public affairs, the temper of Parliament and the feeling of constituencies, and so forth.  All these are part of the elements that go to the formation of his own judgment, and he will certainly not neglect to find out as much about them as he possibly can.  Nor, again, does the increase of the personal sentiment about our public prints lessen the general working fidelity of their conductors to a party.  It is their duty, no doubt, to discuss the merits of measures as they arise.  In this respect any one can see how radically they differ from the Member of Parliament, whose business is not only to discuss but to act.  The Member of Parliament must look at the effect of his vote in more lights than one.  Besides the merits of the given measure, it is his duty to think of the wishes of those who chose him to represent them; and if, moreover, the effect of voting against a measure of which he disapproves would be to overthrow a whole Ministry of which he strongly approves, then, unless some very vital principle indeed were involved, to give such a vote would be to prefer a small object to a great one, and would indicate a very queasy monkish sort of conscience.  The journalist is not in the same position.  He is an observer and a critic, and can afford, and is bound, to speak the truth.  But even in his case, the disagreement, as Burke said, “will be only enough to indulge freedom, without violating concord or disturbing arrangement.”  There is a certain “partiality which becomes a well-chosen friendship.”  “Men thinking freely will, in particular instances, think differently.  But still as the greater part of the measures which arise in the course of public business are related to, or dependent on, some great leading general principles in government, a man must be peculiarly unfortunate