practically estimate and enumerate the forces which controlled it
thus:--Six, or at the most a dozen men, the proprietors and editors of
different newspapers sold in cheap millions to the people. Most of
these newspapers were formed into 'companies'; and the managers issued
'shares' in the fashion of tea merchants and grocers. False news, if of
a duly sensational character, would sometimes send up the shares in the
market,--true information would equally, on occasion, send them down.
These premises granted, might it not follow that for newspaper
speculators, the False would often prove more lucrative than the True?
And, concerning the persons who wrote for these newspapers,--of what
calling and election were they? Male and female, young and old, they
were generally of a semi-educated class lacking all distinctive
ability,--men and women who were, on an average, desperately poor, and
desperately dissatisfied. To earn daily bread they naturally had to
please the editors set in authority over them; hence their expressed
views and opinions on any subject could only be counted as _nil_,
being written, not independently, but under the absolute control of
their employers. Thus meditating, the King summed up the total of his
own mental argument, and found that the vast sounding 'power of the
Press' so far as his own dominion was concerned, resolved itself into
the mere trade monopoly of the aforesaid leading dozen men. What he now
proposed to himself to discover among other things, was,--how far and
how truly these dozen tradesmen voiced the mind of the People over whom
he was elected to reign? Here was a problem, and one not easy to solve.
But what was very plain and paramount to his mind was this,--that he
was thoroughly sick and tired of being no more than a 'social' figure
in the world's affairs. It was an effeminate part to play. It was time,
he considered, that he should intelligently try his own strength, and
test the nation's quality.