JOURNALISM. 



the great enterprises of the London newspapers. The proprietors 

 of a single morning journal are able to maintain agencies, for 

 the transmission of intelligence to the central office in London, in 

 all the principal cities of Europe , besides roving correspondents 

 wherever the prevalence of war, revolution, or any other public 

 event excites a local interest. These various agents or " corre- 

 spondents " as they are called, not only transmit to the centre of 

 intelligence in London regular despatches by the mails, but also, 

 on occasion of emergency, by special couriers. 



These despatches are first received by an agent at Dover, by 

 whom they are forwarded to London by a special messenger. 

 But in cases where intelligence arrives of adequate importance, it 

 is transmitted from the principal continental cities direct to 

 London, in an abridged form, by the electric telegraph, thus 

 anticipating the detailed despatches by many days. Within two 

 hours of its arrival the intelligence is in the hands of tine London 

 public. 



That portion of the journal intended for the provinces is sent to 

 press at 3 A.ir. ; and by the activity of the editors, reporters, and 

 compositors, all of whom work during the night, it includes not 

 only the detailed reports of the Houses of Parliament, which often 

 sit to a late hour in the morning, but also the foreign news, as 

 above explained, .by electric telegraph. This earliest impression 

 is printed and delivered to the newsvenders, in sufficient time to 

 be despatched to the provinces by the early railway trains, and it 

 is thus delivered at all the stations along the road. 



The part of the impression intended for London circulation is 

 worked off and delivered later. 



Thus we see that, by these combinations of enterprise, intel- 

 lectual and material, the intelligence which arrives in London at 

 3 A.^r., is written, composed, printed, and distributed within a 

 radius of one hundred miles round London, and in the hands of 

 the population before their customary hour of breakfast. 



Even before the present improved methods of transport were 

 brought into operation, wonders in this way were effected. 



Thus, in some cases where debates of adequate public interest 

 took place in Parliament in the evening, the evening mails (for 

 there were then no other) carried to the provinces the first part of an 

 important speech, reported and printed before the remaining part 

 was spoken. Thus it was related that the commencement of Mr. 

 (since Lord) Brougham's celebrated speech on the reform of the 

 laws was read at tea-tables twenty miles from London before he 

 had pronounced the peroration. 



Few of the numerous readers of newspapers have the least idea 

 of the immense commercial, social, and intellectual powers wielded, 



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