HOW THE PRESS REVOLUTION CAME 69

councils of Europe—all these and suchlike things are to
us mere pestilent emptiness* The elevation, the more
constant employment, the increase of food in the
stomach; dignity in the souls; joy, humanity, tender-
ness in the hearts of the people—these and these things
alone represent to us progress, glory, national greatness/'

The attack on privilege cannot have been agreeable to
pursy Liberals, with eyes on titles, which most of them
in due time received. ' ' T* P/' justified it on these grounds:

" Privilege stands as a barrier on the very threshold
of the kingdom into which we would have all sons and
daughters of men enter. Privilege degrades alike
the man who is and the man who is not privileged*
The privileged are made selfish from their earliest
years, for they are taught to forget the equality in
all essentials of all human beings, to demand too
much for themselves, and to concede too little to
others; and privilege equally degrades the poor by
cultivating unmanly servility. * . *

" The House of Lords, the property vote, the mono-
poly of Parliamentary life by the rich—these all belong
to the edifice of privilege and must be swept away/'

That was written close on half a century ago. At that
date no one thought it odd that a newspaper should be
founded with such aims. To-day it would seem as strange
for a newspaper to avow them as for a grocer's shop to
open with a declaration that its object was to abolish
political anachronisms and social sins* The newspaper
has become commercial; it is an organ of profit, and,
though it may pay some controllers and shareholders to
profess devotion to a cause, everyone knows they would