subsidy.

But there is now a graver corruption at work even than this always
negative and sometimes positive power of the advertiser.

It is the advent of the great newspaper owner as the true governing
power in the political machinery of the State, superior to the
officials in the State, nominating ministers and dismissing them,
imposing policies, and, in general, usurping sovereignty--all this
secretly and without responsibility.

It is the chief political event of our time and is the peculiar mark
of this country to-day. Its full development has come on us suddenly
and taken us by surprise in the midst of a terrible war. It was
undreamt of but a few years ago. It is already to-day the capital fact
of our whole political system. A Prime Minister is made or deposed by
the owner of a group of newspapers, not by popular vote or by any
other form of open authority.

No policy is attempted until it is ascertained that the newspaper
owner is in favour of it. Few are proffered without first consulting
his wishes. Many are directly ordered by him. We are, if we talk in
terms of real things (as men do in their private councils at
Westminster) mainly governed to-day, not even by the professional
politicians, nor even by those who pay them money, but by whatever
owner of a newspaper trust is, for the moment, the most unscrupulous
and the most ambitious.

How did such a catastrophe come about? That is what we must inquire
into before going further to examine its operation and the possible