carried on in the London Gazette after the Restoration[1] and has been generally accepted in spite of the obvious limitations in its use.[2] But even to-day distinctions must be noted in its use. The country editor uses "we," but often with a familiar, personal tone. Editorials on large, important subjects are often written with the home town in mind and in relation to local interests. In the great metropolitan dailies, the "we" that on the editorial page in the early days represented only a single voice has developed into the collective "we" that on the news pages, through the hundreds of significant passages collected by telegraph from editorials all over the country, justifies more than ever before the claim that the press is "the fourth estate."
The charge is often made that the editor has changed his position on important public questions and the implication is conveyed that the change has come from a desire to curry favor with those in authority, or from the still more ambitious plan of becoming the power behind the throne. The charge comes from other members of the press who with mirth resort to "the deadly parallel column" to prove their position,[3]—an effective weapon, but one which can be used in both directions and turned against the press. John Bright once said, "The Times says I repeat myself; the Times says I am guilty of what it calls tautology; the Times says I am always saying the same thing. What I complain of in the Times is that it never says the same thing."[4] Nor was John Bright alone in thinking that The Times never said the same thing. Greville found that "The 'Times' newspaper, always famous for its versatility and inconsistency, has lately produced articles on the Eastern Question on the same day of the most opposite characters, one warlike and firm, the next vehemently
- ↑ J. B. Williams, "John Milton, Journalist," Oxford and Cambridge Review, April, 1912, 18: 73–88.
- ↑ M. M'D. Bodkin finds that "The mysterious editorial 'we' is vaguely suggestive of an oracle kept tame on the newspaper premises and ready to deliver impromptu and infallible pronouncements on every subject under heaven, for the leader writer must know something of everything, or at least successfully assume a knowledge if he have it not."—Recollections of an Irish Judge, p. 245.
- ↑ It was undoubtedly with peculiar pleasure that the London Nation, of October 12, 1918, printed a selection in fulsome praise of Emperor William from the Daily Mail of June 20, 1910.
- ↑ Cited by G. M. Trevelyan, Life of John Bright, p. 250.
