country and its institutions, and shielded from the allurements of alien

and inimical systems." He sketched the manner in which the reverent

Turkish or Russian journalist fulfilled this function--the one assisted

by the prevalent "discipline of respect" for the bastinado, the other for

Siberia. Continuing, he said:

The chief function of an English journal is that of all other journals

the world over: it must keep the public eye fixed admiringly upon certain

things, and keep it diligently diverted from certain others. For

instance, it must keep the public eye fixed admiringly upon the glories

of England, a processional splendor stretching its receding line down the

hazy vistas of time, with the mellowed lights of a thousand years

glinting from its banners; and it must keep it diligently diverted from

the fact that all these glories were for the enrichment and

aggrandizement of the petted and privileged few, at cost of the blood and

sweat and poverty of the unconsidered masses who achieved them but

might not enter in and partake of them. It must keep the public eye fixed in

loving and awful reverence upon the throne as a sacred thing, and

diligently divert it from the fact that no throne was ever set up by the

unhampered vote of a majority of any nation; and that hence no throne

exists that has a right to exist, and no symbol of it, flying from any

flagstaff, is righteously entitled to wear any device but the skull and

crossbones of that kindred industry which differs from royalty only

business-wise--merely as retail differs from wholesale. It must keep the

citizen's eye fixed in reverent docility upon that curious invention of

machine politics, an Established Church, and upon that bald contradiction

The American Claimant