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Fourthly, but also partly economic, there is the impediment the Free Press suffers of imperfect information.  It will print truths which the Great Papers studiously conceal, but daily and widespread information on general matters it has great difficulty in obtaining.

Information is obtained either at great expense through private agents, or else by favour through official channels, that is, from the professional politicians.  The Official Press makes and unmakes the politicians.  Therefore, the politician is careful to keep it informed of truths that are valuable to him, as well as to make it the organ of falsehoods equally valuable.

Most of the official papers, for instance, were informed of the Indian Silver scandal by the culprits themselves in a fashion which forestalled attack.  Those who led the attack groped in the dark.

For we must remember that the professional politicians all stand in together when a financial swindle is being carried out.  There is no “opposition” in these things.  Since it is the very business of the Free Press to expose the falsehood or inanity of the Official Capitalist Press, one may truly say that a great part of the energies of the Free Press is wasted in this “groping in the dark” to which it is condemned.  At the same time, the Economic difficulty prevents the Free Press from paying for information difficult to be obtained, and under these twin disabilities it remains heavily handicapped.

THE POLITICAL LAWYERS

We must consider separately, for it is not universal but peculiar to our own society, the heavy disability under which the Free Press suffers in this country from the now unchecked power of the political lawyers.

I have no need to emphasize the power of a Guild when it is once formed, and has behind it strong corporate traditions.  It is the principal thesis of “The New Age,” in which this essay first appeared, that national guilds, applied to the whole field of society, would be the saving of it through their inherent strength and vitality.

Such guilds as we still have among us (possessed of a Charter giving them a monopoly, and, therefore, making them in “The New Age” phrase “black-leg proof”) are confined, of course, to the privileged wealthier classes.  The two great ones with which we are all familiar are those of the Doctors and of the Lawyers.

What their power is we saw in the sentencing to one of the most terrible punishments known to all civilized Europe—­twelve months hard labour—­of a man who had exercised his supposed right to give medical advice to a patient who had freely consulted him.  The patient happened to die, as she might have died in the hands of a regular Guild doctor.  It has been known for patients to die under the hands of regular Guild doctors.  But the mishap taking place in the hands of some one who was not of the Guild, although the advice had been freely sought and honestly given, the person who infringed the monopoly of the Guild suffered this savage piece of revenge.