xxxv.} LETTER TO THE DAILY TELEGRAPH. 901

Socrates of the Sophist and his public, 2 man had observed
bhe appetites of a great and powerful beast, how to approach
it, why it is furious or calm, what tones soothe and what
bones irritate it. Like the Sophist, the newspaper reflects
the morality, the intelligence, the tone of sentiment, of its
public. If the latter is vicious, so is the former.
As it happened, a great organ in the penny press
treated Cobden, as he thought, even worse than if its price
had been threepence. The Daily Telegraph declined to
print Cobden’s letter to Mr. Delane, from a rather unctuously
expressed tenderness for Cobden’s reputation; but though
it suppressed his letter, it published some very unfriendly
comments on it. Cobden protested against this with much
vivacity. The merciful haze of time has effaced the interest
of much of his letter, but some portion of it is relevant to
still unsettled questions in the constitution of the literary
priesthood.

1863.
Ar. 59.

The question concerns the Government on one side, and the leading
London journal on the other. Does not that affect the public? Is the
disposal of Government patronage—the appointment to posts which the
public pay—a private or personal question? Recollect, I repeat, that
the entire controversy between us is—whether or not the subject should
be shrouded in secrecy. Itis not the question of anonymous writing
that is in debate. Z%at is only the red herring drawn across the true
scent. We all write anonymously, more or less. The only objection is
to the masked literary assassin, Nor is it a question whether writers
for the press have a right to their share of public appointments; nobody
denies it. I do not even say that the stream of patronage ought not to
flow to the Z¥mes office; I only contend that it should not run underground,

Far from thinking that the class of whom we are speaking should
be excluded from the public service, I form a very high estimate of the
fitness for legislative and administrative function, of those who write
for the political instruction of the people. And it is on this account
that, while I deny to no one the right of an honest incognito, I regret
that the prevalent, and perhaps unavoidable habit of anonymous writing
in the metropolis, should entomb, for all practical political purposes, so
much of our best intellect, and rob society of the full development of