regarded as final, and it is not altogether reasonable to hold it responsible for not doing what, from its very nature, it can not do .
In all of these adverse criticisms of the press, it must be re membered that it is through the press itself that they are given
circulation ,-- an indication that thepress itself is most responsive to the criticism directed against it. “Nowhere is a newspaper so criticised as among those who create it,” said Charles T . Cong
den ,21 and in this it shares the experience of all other occupations and professions. It is from schools and colleges that come the most severe criticismsofeducational systems. No one is so severe a censor of the failings of the Church as is the Church itself. Politicians and statesmen are everywhere the severest critics of the political system . But while other occupations and professionsmust wait on the printed word to carry abroad their strictures on themselves, the
press is ever prepared to act against itself. It was in 1795 that
Charles Whittingham started The Tomahawk! or Censor General, with themotto “ Pro rege saepe, pro patria semper,” and it ran for one hundred and thirteen numbers. The Tomahawk professedly
avoided news and its main object was “ to expose the daily lies in the newspapers, . . . but the tax-master came and clapped on the newspaper stamp, daily killing and exposing lies being
pronounced news,” 22 and it was discontinued. In Austria only recently Fackel, a periodical pamphlet of Vienna, “ biting, sting ing, sometimes scurrilous," has kept " a vigilant eye upon the follies and failings of daily journalism and pillories them merci
lessly .” 23 If the sins of omission and of commission on the part of the press are not widely known, it is not because of lack of publication through the columns of the press itself.
If there has been frequent anxiety expressed of the dangers of the press from
commercial interests, it has been Fleet Street
itself that has been “ alarmed at the encroachments made by a few wealthy men .” 24 It is the editor who holds out encourage ment and finds that “ Large capital in newspapers, and their 21 Reminiscences of a Journalist, p . 268.
22 J. C . Francis, John Francis, II, 364- 365. 23 H . W . Steed , The Hapsburg Monarchy, p. 192.
24 Correspondence of the New York Evening Post, December 10,
