newspaper that is not a compilation, I would venture to remind you,
if I delicately may, in the august presence of members of
Parliament, how much we, the public, owe to the reporters if it
were only for their skill in the two great sciences of condensation
and rejection. Conceive what our sufferings, under an Imperial
Parliament, however popularly constituted, under however glorious a
constitution, would be if the reporters could not skip. Dr.
Johnson, in one of his violent assertions, declared that "the man
who was afraid of anything must be a scoundrel, sir." By no means
binding myself to this opinion--though admitting that the man who
is afraid of a newspaper will generally be found to be rather
something like it, I must still freely own that I should approach
my Parliamentary debate with infinite fear and trembling if it were
so unskilfully served up for my breakfast. Ever since the time
when the old man and his son took their donkey home, which were the
old Greek days, I believe, and probably ever since the time when
the donkey went into the ark--perhaps he did not like his
accommodation there--but certainly from that time downwards, he has
objected to go in any direction required of him--from the remotest
periods it has been found impossible to please everybody.

I do not for a moment seek to conceal that I know this Institution
has been objected to. As an open fact challenging the freest
discussion and inquiry, and seeking no sort of shelter or favour
but what it can win, it has nothing, I apprehend, but itself, to
urge against objection. No institution conceived in perfect
honesty and good faith has a right to object to being questioned to
any extent, and any institution so based must be in the end the
better for it. Moreover, that this society has been questioned in
quarters deserving of the most respectful attention I take to be an