Liberalism, the Press, and the Construction of the Public Sphere: Theories of the Press in Britain, 1830-1914

Liberalism, the Press, and the Construction of the Public Sphere: Theories of the Press inBritain, 1830-1914Author(s): Mark HamptonSource: Victorian Periodicals Review, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), pp. 72-92Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Research Society for VictorianPeriodicalsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20083990 .

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Liberalism, the Press, and the Construction of the Public Sphere:

Theories of the Press in Britain,

1830-19141

MARK HAMPTON

In a critical review of F. Knight Hunt's The Fourth Estate, published in

1850, the anonymous reviewer asserted that

The only history of the press in which the world at large is interested, or which,

indeed, conveys a moral worth gathering, is the history of public opinion... . The

mere chronicle of the rise and expansion of newspapers is of no further value,

beyond any curiosity that may attach to its personal details and anecdotes, than as

it bears upon the larger question of public liberty. ("History of Newspapers"

596-97)

A century and a half later, this review remains an apt critique of much of

today's press history. While newspapers and periodicals are widely con

sidered the most important media of communication in Victorian Britain, too many histories of the press limit themselves to biography or individ

ual journals' internal histories.

Such narrow focus obscures the centrality of the press to understanding the "structure of feeling" of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth cen

turies.2 The media, of course, are not autonomous cultural agents but are

the product of complex social negotiations, and the meanings attached to

the agents of mass communication reveal a great deal about the power relations within a society. In late-Victorian Britain, changing understand

ings of the press often pointed to an apprehension of modernity and an

increasing fear of the "masses," as well as a desire to contain both.3

This grappling with the implications of modernity led to changes within the character of Victorian liberalism. Most histories of liberalism

focus upon Liberal party organization, biography of Liberal politicians, or, more recently, intellectual continuities between mid-century popular liberalism and both the radicalism of the early nineteenth century and the



MARK HAMPTON 73

labourism of the fin de si?cle.4 This essay, by contrast, will examine the

changing role ascribed to the press within political discourse. It will argue that whereas in the mid-century theories of the press prevailed that were

conducive to what Matthew calls a "liberal ethos" of politics by public discussion, by the end of the century, prevailing theories of the press tended to emphasize its uses as a tool for representing the interests of the

people, as an editor judged them (Matthew 56). The former ideal presup

posed a readership that could rationally evaluate conflicting ideas or

could be educated to do so. The latter ideal, by contrast, assigned to read ers a passive role, safely excluding them from the formation of "opinion."

A transformation thus occurred in the ways in which the British educated

and professional classes sought to construct^ public sphere. Whatever the

fortunes of the Liberal Party, the last decades of the nineteenth century witnessed a loss of confidence in the power of public discussion upon which the "liberal ethos" depended.

This article centers chiefly on elite discussions of the role of the press; its sources are most often those produced by and, for the most part, for

the educated, propertied, or professional segments of society. As such, it must be recognized that these understandings of the press were not the

only ones in circulation. Most readers, for example, no doubt read prima

rily for entertainment or even escapism (Vincent chapter 6).5 Moreover,

especially in the era of the New Journalism, journalists increasingly

attempted to provide these readers with what they apparently wanted. Yet the focus on elite sources stems from a concern for understanding the sensibilities of those who believed they had the most to fear from moder

nity. Stuart Hall has identified the period between 1880 and 1920 as one

marked by a "profound transformation in the culture of the popular classes" (229), yet a transformation that can be understood only in terms

of a dynamic interaction between what he calls the "dominant and the dominated classes" (230). The present article suggests, correspondingly, a

transformation in elite culture that itself was in part a response to per

ceived changes in popular culture. Throughout the period considered

here, elite classes perceived a crucial gap between themselves and the pop ular classes. Those who spoke of the "educational" role of the press, or

saw it as a tool for democratizing the British political system, generally did not believe themselves to need political education, nor did they sit

outside of the political nation themselves. In their minds, the targets of

the "educational" press, or the beneficiaries of a "representative" press, were those excluded from mid-Victorian high politics

- those who were at least in theory brought in by the democratization of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

These understandings of the press transcended partisan divisions. Not

surprisingly, the hold of the "liberal ethos" was greater over members of



74 Victorian Periodicals Review 37:1 Spring 2004

the Liberal party than over Conservatives (Matthew). Equally unsurpris

ingly, Liberals were more likely to welcome the press enthusiastically, whereas Conservatives who articulated an "educational ideal" were more

likely paying lip service to a prevailing ideal while accepting only reluc

tantly the idea of including the popular classes in either public discussion or newspaper readership (A. Jones 15 5-79). These nuances are important, but they do not diminish the fact that as the press was seen to reach more

and more readers, and as the content of the press was seen to become

increasingly trivial, few people of any party held out hope of employing Britain's dominant medium in creating a public sphere that facilitated a

politics by public discussion.

Much debate has centered around J?rgen Habermas' concept of the

bourgeois public sphere. Critics have noted his slippage between treating the public sphere as an historical entity and a normative ideal by which to

judge contemporary society. Scholars have questioned whether or not

such a thing ever actually existed and what relevance Habermas' concept has for understanding nineteenth-century history.7 This is not the place to revisit these debates but rather to note that Habermas' concept of a

public sphere, and its late-nineteenth-century decline, reproduce (albeit in

more sophisticated form) concerns voiced by critics of the press through out the nineteenth century. As Jonathan Parry has stated, nineteenth

century liberalism entailed "confidence in the power of discussion and

reason," which brought about a consensus that found expression in Par

liament's legislation (Parry 9). For critics of the New Journalism, one of

its most disturbing threats was to the notion of an inclusive and rational

politics by public discussion. The New Journalism's champions, as we

will see, redefined the public sphere in a manner that did not presume such an inclusive discussion.

In Craig Calhoun's words, "a public sphere adequate to a democratic

polity depends upon both quality of discourse and quantity of participa tion" (Calhoun 2). For this reason, mid-Victorian Liberals such as

Gladstone championed the abolition of newspaper taxes, or "taxes

on knowledge," in the hopes that the rational pursuit of "truth" or the

"common good" could extend to an ever-expanding press readership.

Although this liberal position reflected not so much a desire to allow the

representation of all opinions as a confidence that their own, self

evidently true, opinions would prevail, it nevertheless embodied the

desire to create the sort of public sphere envisioned by Habermas.9

Both the educational and representative concepts had antecedents in

the early nineteenth century. In debates concerning the newspaper stamp and other "taxes on knowledge" in the years after 1819, middle class

reformers tended to adopt an "educational" approach, which working



MARK HAMPTON 75

class radical journalists often argued that they "represented the people"

(Wiener 29-41, 116-24).10

Opposing the stamp tax, John Crawfurd insisted in his 1836 pamphlet that it was "inflicted upon the people with the avowed object of arresting the progress of information, and of confining knowledge, or, at least

political knowledge, to the ruling factions" (Crawfurd 3). In his motion

before the House of Commons in 1832, Edward Lytton Bulwer under

scored the link between ignorance and crime as measured by the illiteracy of the criminal population. Arguing that crime was a social cost of igno rance, Bulwer urged the Commons that "[i]t was, then, their duty to dif

fuse instruction in all its modes; yet he thought it would be scarcely necessary for him to contend that newspapers were among the readiest

and most effectual instruments of diffusing that instruction" (National Political Union 4-5). He went on to link the promotion of education

through newspapers to the spread of political power through the expan sion of the electorate, arguing that with the help of newspapers, "by

degrees there would grow up that community of intelligence between the

government and the people" (National Political Union 10). Middle-class defenders of the greater freedom of the press emphasized,

then, its usefulness as a means of educating the people. During an era of

political turbulence and fear of "the people," this claim could potentially serve as a powerful propaganda device on behalf of the press. Hence, in a

pamphlet published in 1836 by Charles Knight, proprietor of Penny

Magazine, the link between education by means of the press and the

development of good government was made more explicitly:

The people of England, by the recent great changes in the constitution, have

acquired the power not only of influencing the measures of government by the

force of public opinion, but of controlling and directing them more immediately

than at any former period of our history. It is not only necessary that the people

should feel their rights, but that they should exercise them wisely and temper

ately. They cannot do so without political knowledge. Without political knowl

edge it might be possible that the nation would suffer as much from the ignorance

of the many, who will influence public affairs, as from the selfishness of the few,

who have influenced them. The time, however, is now past ... when it is possible

to refuse the people political knowledge through the medium of cheap newspa

pers. (The Newspaper Stamp 8)

While the linking of "the people" to the reforms of 1832 might suggest that Knight did not intend to include the working classes under that

rubric, the context of the debates on the role of the press suggest that that

is precisely what most meant. Time and again, the taxes on knowledge



y6 Victorian Periodicals Review 37:1 Spring 2004

were attacked on the grounds that they prevented the poor from afford

ing the legal newspapers and that they forced the poor to read the cheaper illegal papers, whose lies subsequently could be refuted only by the

prohibitively-priced stamped papers.11 In this campaign against the "taxes on

knowledge," however, "educa

tion" and "knowledge" were contested concepts. Many among the work

ing classes suspected, rightly, that these middle-class reformers merely wished to teach them to acquiesce to the existing political order. Journal

ists operating in the unstamped press argued that "useful knowledge is

useless," indicating that the legal press was not properly educational.

They argued that what the people needed was not lessons in political economy or hydrostatics or any of the other topics of journals like Penny

Magazine but explicit, factual knowledge about the ways in which the

ruling classes were oppressing the poor. Many radical journalists, in fact,

argued that proper "education" would effectively "represent the people," a

key concern in an era of Parliamentary "virtual representation." In the

1880s, when boasts of the press' educational role were relatively scarce,

champions of the press would draw on these radical journalists' language of "representation."

During the mid-nineteenth century, defenders of the press' political and social role continued to emphasize its function in "educating" or

"improving" readers. At this time, concepts of "education" and "knowl

edge" seem to have become much less contested within the many discus sions of the press, and these words became incorporated in rather routine, banal slogans. At the same time, notions of the press as

"representative of

the people" were largely absent from political discussion. To be sure, the

defense of the free trade in ideas, like free trade in the commercial or

imperial realms, reflected as much as anything a confidence among the

enfranchised classes that their vision of the world would win in any open contest. This observation should by no means surprise us. During this

period, popular liberalism flourished to an extent that allowed the edu

cated and professional classes to remain optimistic about the unenfran

chised working classes' commitment to the existing political and social

order (Biagini, Joyce 1991, Joyce 1994; Biagini and Reid). Nevertheless, the ritualistic manner in which these phrases were used should not

obscure the fact that behind them lay a meaningful belief in the power of

discussion that, as Matthew states, was coming to pervade one party and to some extent to penetrate the other (Matthew 56).

The ideal of a public sphere that facilitated rational discussion of the sort that could "educate" or "influence" its readers did not entirely disap pear from the discourse concerning the press; indeed it persisted in some

contexts throughout the twentieth century. During the late-nineteenth

century, however, discussions of the press increasingly began to de



MARK HAMPTON 77

emphasize its educational role. Increasingly, discussions of the press affirmed its function in "representing" the people, through "exposing" or

"publicizing" corruption and thereby leading to its removal.

The "representative" model entailed an image of the press as represent

ing "the people" either more directly or more completely than did Parlia

ment itself.12 That is, the press was an agent that ensured that politicians in Westminster did not forget the interests of the people. By constantly

exposing or publicizing corruption and abuses - that is, by printing the

news, not by offering opinions - editors would force the government to

behave properly. Unlike the "educational" theory, the "representative"

theory did not presuppose rationality on the part of newspaper readers.

Moreover, it did not cast newspapers as a tool to prepare readers for self

government; rather, it posited newspapers as constituting the readers'

exercise in self-government. In other words, the "representative" concept

did not require as much faith in the ability of individuals to govern them

selves as the "educational" ideal did.

The "representative" theory of the press found expression in many dif

ferent contexts, most famously, perhaps, in the claims of W. T. Stead.13

For those contemporary critics of the style and tone of the New Journal

ism, Stead was among the worst of villains, yet his rhetoric stood out only for its bombastic and programmatic qualities; in his emphasis on "repre

senting the people," Stead articulated a theme that increasingly dominated

discussions of the press. Most famous for his "Maiden Tribute" attack on

underage prostitution, Stead published two brief articles in 1886, both in

Contemporary Review, advocating "government by journalism." In the

first of these articles, Stead made ambitious claims on behalf of the press'

governing role. Rather than seeing the press' role as merely acting

as a

check on Parliament, Stead believed that the press had become the

"Chamber of Initiative." In Stead's words, "No measure ever gets itself

into shape, as a rule, before being debated many times as a project in the

columns of the newspapers" (Stead 656). For Stead, the press was usurp

ing the role of the House of Commons, and properly so:

Government by kings went out of fashion in this country when Charles Stuart

lost his head. Government by the House of Lords perished with Gatton and Old

Sarum. Is it possible that government by the House of Commons may equally

become out of date? Without venturing into the dim and hazardous region of

prophecy, it is enough to note that the trend of events is in that direction. Govern

ment tends ever downward. Nations become more and more impatient of inter

mediaries between themselves and the exercise of power. (653)

According to Stead, newspapers had several advantages over the House

of Commons as the source of effective and legitimate political power.




Most importantly, the editor was closer to the general population than was the Member of Parliament. Because the House of Commons was

elected only every seven years, it was easy for its members to "cease to be

in touch with the people." In Stead's words, the "member immediately after his election leaves his constituency, and plunges into a new world

with different atmosphere, moral, social, and political. But an editor, on

the other hand, must live among the people whose opinions he essays to

express." Stead presented an alternative side to prevailing criticism of the

press' dependence on commercial interests; he argued that the editor had

to express the interests of his readers, even if it meant writing "sorely

against his will" on topics that did not interest him, or else the public would desert him (654-5).

For Stead, factors that enabled the editor more effectively to represent the people's interests included the fact that the newspaper was published

daily; rather than receiving a mandate every several years, the editor

received his mandate daily, for readers would not continue to purchase a

paper whose editor was "out of touch." Moreover, the newspaper-as

representative did not feature the plutocratic limitations of Parliament, for anyone with a penny could cast a "vote" for a particular paper; there

were no property or registration or age or gender qualifications (Stead

655). Democracy, thus, became equated with consumerism.

The editor's qualification as representative of the people rested, then, on his proximity to them. But how did the editor actually exercise effec

tive power? Stead described two distinct methods. First, he emphasized the role of publicity, or exposure, of social evils that needed correcting.

Echoing the radical critique of corruption of power, Stead asserted that

abuses thrived in conditions of secrecy: "Whenever you shut off any

department from the supervision of the Press, there you find abuses

which would speedily perish in the light of day." He continued, arguing that the press was "the great inspector, with a myriad eyes, who never

sleeps, and whose daily reports are submitted, not to a functionary or a

department, but to the whole people" (Stead 673). Here Stead seemed to

assume that public ignorance constituted the chief reason that official pol icies and practises that were contrary to the public good were allowed to

continue. He credited the "sensationalism" of the press with the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act and the appointment of the Royal

Commission on the Housing of the Poor (672). For Stead, then, the press could exercise power simply by exposing wrongs and then leaving to the

elected government the task of rectifying them. Significantly, this line of

thinking implicitly cast the journalist not simply as the conveyor of public

opinion but as its interpreter as well. For the journalist decided which

wrongs would be publicized or exposed, and, thus, which wrongs most

flagrantly flouted the interests of "the people."



MARK HAMPTON 79

The editor's second means of exercising political power involved the

communication of public opinion to ministers through the medium of the

newspaper. Stead recalled an episode in which a permanent official, who was his friend, asked him to publish a "rouser" to give his chief the

resolve to support a certain Act "against which some interested clamour was being raised." Stead published the requested piece, and his friend's

chief found the courage to defend the Act (Stead 659). Once again, Stead's

argument on behalf of the editor's exercise of political power depended upon the editor's ability to speak for the people; his story did not offer

any suggestion of how to ensure that an unscrupulous editor did not pro vide an official with the resolve to support simply a different "interested" act. Rather, it seemed to require of the editor a great measure of virtue and

perception.14

Stead's rhetoric, moreover, found expression in his practice. Both in his

campaign against the Bulgarian atrocities and in his "Maiden Tribute," he

drew on melodramatic tropes, presenting to his readers a world of good versus evil. In this world, Stead found no worthy political opponents to

engage in debate, only the morally reprobate who must at all costs be

thwarted.15 While, of course, Stead's defenders could claim that he was

"educating" his readers, it is significant that his articles did not present the

readers with, say, a persuasive argument on behalf of his ideas on British

foreign policy, such as a mid-Victorian editor might. Rather, by pre

senting or publicizing "facts" that he knew would awake his readers'

moral outrage, he sought to demonstrate that he spoke for the people, that he represented their interests or ideals.

The founders of the Institute of Journalists employed rhetoric similar

to, though less provocative than, Stead's.17 Speaking before the National

Association of Journalists in 1887, in order to justify the creation of a pro fessional organization, the President, Sir Algernon Borthwick, told the audience at the Birmingham District Conference dinner that

From the Queen down to her humblest subject there was no one who was not

aware of the value of the press, and the protection it gave to all that suffered or

were in any kind of danger or

injustice; and the manner in which it could vindicate

the law and advocate generally what was right and patriotic?(applause). (Journal

ism, November 1887, 4)

Borthwick, editor of the Morning Post, a Conservative Member of Parlia

ment, the first "press lord," and the initiator of the 1887 Amendment to

the Newspaper Libel Act, thus founded his claims of journalism's public service on the concept of representing the people's interests.

Five years later, after the National Association had been converted into the Institute of Journalists, Sir Charles Russell, in a presidential address to



8o Victorian Periodicals Review 37:1 Spring 2004

the Annual Dinner of the London District of the Institute, used similar

yet more explicit language. Proposing a toast to the "Institute of Journal ists," Russell boasted that the "Press possessed a power of enormous

magnitude, and it was not too much to say that journalists in the present

day could make and unmake Governments, could make and unmake rep utations, and well performed the important functions of representing the current of opinion of the time" (Journalist and Newspaper Proprietor, 2 April 1892, 12). It is difficult to imagine a more overt claim of journal ism's role as people's "representative." Power belonged to Parliament

only at the pleasure of the press; and the press' good will derived directly from "opinion," which the press merely "represented," but did not cre

ate. In making claims on behalf of journalists' public role and their

deserving of professional status, the Institute's leaders turned naturally to

the rhetoric that, increasingly, dominated discussions of the press. This "representative" idiom did not surface only in professional con

texts but in academic discussions as well. For example, in his 1882 history of the press, Yorkshire Post editor Charles Pebody credited the press with

making "bribery and corruption, in the old sense of the term, impossi ble," thereby enabling England to become "the freest State in the world"

despite its anachronistic "feudal relics" such as the monarchy and aristoc

racy. He did not go so far as to suggest that the press superseded Parlia

ment, as Stead did four years later, but insisted that it served as a

"constitutional check upon the conduct of ministers." In addition to its function of publicizing abuses, the press also prevented them by unifying the nation, turning it into a "compact and powerful mass" that could not

easily be oppressed (Pebody iv-v). Like Stead, Pebody credited the press with helping to organize "the people" into a cohesive nation that included

everybody except for their oppressors.

Similarly, Frank Taylor, in his 1898 pamphlet, wrote that the press "is

the watch-dog of the State. Its mere existence is a guarantee against a

recrudescence of abuses." Attempting to influence public opinion was not

necessary; in reporting abuses, "Publication means condemnation. Facts

without comment suffice to create opinion" (Frank Taylor 14-15).

Indeed, for Taylor, the extent to which the press created public opinion did not include rational persuasion, but merely putting into writing the

sentiments that the readers already were "darkly groping after," that is,

giving "appropriate shape to masses of half-articulate feeling" (Frank

Taylor 12). These shifting roles ascribed to the press entailed different understand

ings of "public opinion." Recent scholarship has emphasized the various

meanings of "public opinion" in different political and cultural contexts

(Wahrman). Accordingly, each of the views of the press outlined here

resulted in, and depended upon, a different view of the nature of "public



MARK HAMPTON 8l

opinion." For those who held to an educational role for the press, public

opinion was unitary and reasonable. At the same time, however, it was

imperfectly formed but educable. Its claims to the attentions of Westmin

ster did not follow merely from its belonging to "the people," but from

the fact that it resulted from the struggle between alternative ideas. Public

opinion could thus be judged according to its merits. For those who held

that the press should "represent" public opinion, by contrast, "public

opinion" demanded consideration simply because it was "public." It was,

moreover, fully-formed and not necessarily rational. This understanding of public opinion could, of course, be manipulative. It was well to assert

that public opinion should be heeded, but this presented the opportunity for an interpreter (such as an editor) to announce what this public opinion

was.

Writing in the conservative journal The National Review, in 1885, H.

D. Traill outlined the implications of this understanding of public opin ion. He argued that by comparison with Palmerston's era, Gladstone and

his cabinet no longer viewed public opinion as "effective." Rather, it was

fleeting and transient, and therefore something that could be safely

ignored so long as the Cabinet allowed a sufficient period to elapse before

scheduling an election (Traill 663). For Traill, the increasing quantity of

public opinion had debased its quality. Blanchard Jerrold, writing in

Nineteenth Century, was

equally incisive, asserting that the "manufactur

ers of public opinion" were a "scientific body" and that "the manipulator of working-class opinion" was a skilled specialist (Jerrold 1082). Such

assessments could cause theoretical difficulties for those journalists who

claimed to "represent" the people or public opinion, for they argued that

the opinion the latter claimed to represent was not genuinely worthy of

attention.

The reasons for the relative supersession of the "educational" ideal by the "representative" ideal can only be speculated; the links between social

and intellectual change are notoriously inexact. The "representative"

approach no doubt appealed to late-nineteenth century champions of the

press because it justified the practices of the New Journalism, particularly the dominance of "news" and "sensational" expos?s in place of opinion. In addition, it fit prevailing social theories, which increasingly viewed

"society" as an organic entity, whose "members practised a very high

degree of division of labour and functional specialization"; this way of

understanding society tended to replace approaches that treated society as

merely the sum total of its individual members (Harris 220-50). Along with this de-emphasis on the individual came increasing doubt of the pos

sibility of influencing individuals through rational persuasion.19

Finally, as argued above, the vision of the press as an educational agent reflected a belief in the (at least potential) rationality of all readers and the




possibility of integrating into the political nation those currently outside.

By contrast, the understanding of the press as a "representative" agent

required no such optimism. As such, the latter understanding of the press

might have had a greater appeal after the 18 80s. At this time, as Gareth

Stedman Jones has argued, an increasing proportion of the working classes came to be regarded

as "degenerate" rather than merely "demoral

ized," and the proportion of the working classes regarded as the "resid

uum" expanded; this residuum would have been viewed as "beyond the

pale," as incapable of being educated into the political nation (281-314). This shift in the role that the British attributed to the press, thus, in part constituted a response to the rise of mass democracy. That is, confronted

by an expanding "residuum" as well as the prospect of nearly universal

male suffrage, and a considerable expansion of the reading public that

helped to produce the "sensationalism" of the "new journalism," observ ers became less willing to attribute potential decision-making abilities to

all voters and readers of the press. This unwillingness led to a fragmentation of the imagined public sphere,

resulting in multiple publics defined as different qualitatively, a develop ment that rested uneasily with the emphasis on the unity of "the people"

against would-be tyrants or corruptors exposed by the press. That is, while

attempting to downplay differences in fundamental interests, commenta

tors on the press increasingly recognized in it the growth of distinct "elite" and "mass" publics. Such classification occurred repeatedly. In an article in

the Contemporary Review in 1905 bemoaning the decline of parliamentary reporting, Central News and Pall Mall Gazette war correspondent Alfred

Kinnear blamed readers "of the business class or of the lozenge intelli

gence," who preferred only ten-line summaries rather than full reports of

parliamentary speeches (Kinnear 374). In his rejoinder the following month, A. P. Nicholson, parliamentary correspondent for The Times,

linked the new public explicitly to the Education Act of 1870:

The Board School generation have now their literature and newspapers, that was

inevitable. But the quarterly and monthly reviews have not been killed by the

magazines of Messrs. Harmsworth and Pearson; the Spectator, Athenaeum and

Saturday Review have not been killed by Answers, Pearson's Weekly, or Comic

Cuts-, the Times, Morning Post and Daily Telegraph have not been killed by the

Daily Mail, the Daily Express or the reorganised Standard. (Nicholson 582)

The autodidact and former Chartist W. E. Adams noted that "the few in

all ages have invariably been more refined than the many" and attributed

the new public to the 1870 Act, noting that "our children have been

taught to read without being able to think" and that "everybody can read, without being able to think or not." The popular press had become



MARK HAMPTON 83

debased by appealing to these new readers because "the lowest tastes per vade the biggest multitudes" (Adams 584). Writing in 1916, J. S. R. Phil

lips, editor of the Conservative Yorkshire Post, echoed this sentiment,

noting that the "enormous" circulations of the popular press "result,

largely, from an endeavour to cater for classes whose education has been

restricted to the elementary school, or who, of a more advanced school

ing, always run with the crowd - possibly a tendency natural to demo

cratic times" (169-70). This fragmentation attained its most explicit expression in the writing

of those "forward Liberals" who remained to some extent committed to

an "educational ideal" but refused to extend it, as the previous generation had, to the readers of the popular classes. Numerous examples could illus

trate this fragmentation, but R. A. Scott-James' 1913 book, The Influence

of the Press, possesses the advantages of thoroughness and conceptual

clarity. Texts cited thus far have emphasized predominantly either the

"educational" or the "representative" approach; Scott-James' text, by

contrast, emphasized each approach in turn, depending upon whether he was discussing the "quality" or the popular press. Scott-James, whose

journalistic experience included a six-year stint with the Cadbury's radi

cal Daily News, posited multiple publics, rather than the single, and

potentially inclusive, public that the mid-Victorians had identified.

Indeed, Scott-James reaffirmed the mid-Victorians' image of their press; he argued that because the mid-Victorian newspapers aimed at only a

small portion of the community, rather than the millions, "there was no

need to depart from the essentials of the established tradition" (126). Prior to the 1870 Education Act, then - that is, before the creation of a

new class of readers supposedly forced newspaper owners to introduce

the methods of the New Journalism - all newspapers were able to treat

"seriously their function of giving information - that is to say, not mere

sensation, but reports of those public events which might be expected to

interest enfranchised citizens - speeches by public men, proceedings in

the law-courts, scientific discoveries, etc" (Scott-James 131). In discussing his own era, by contrast, Scott-James identified two dis

tinct publics. On the one hand, the mid-Victorian "liberal" public contin

ued to exist; on the other hand, however, a new and larger public

emerged, centering around the half-penny press. Any journalist who

wished to succeed in the profession need to recognize this division. In

Scott-James' words, "the professional journalist must be content to select

and limit his audience if he is to satisfy the influential few; he will be

tempted to diversify and sensationalize his paper if he would appeal to the

variegated many" (Scott-James 137-38). Scott-James identified the Daily Mail as the newspaper of the larger, uneducated but literate public, whereas, by contrast, "the public which [for example] is interested in the




dextrous interpretation, day by day, of official Liberalism, is the public which is faithful to the Westminster Gazette" (Scott-James 194-5, 212).20

Scott-James saw the smaller, "influential" public of such papers as the

Westminster Gazette very much in the same light as he saw the mid

Victorian public; its members wanted opinions, well-argued and devel

oped at length. On the other hand, he believed that the larger, newly created, non-educated but literate public wanted something more similar to the American-style "Yellow" journalism: "coloured 'funny' pictures

...

colossal headlines ... exaggerated phraseology" (Scott-James 160). More

over, he feared that the success of the half-penny papers that appealed to

this public was prompting owners of the "serious" papers to imitate

them, thus threatening to lead to the demise of the few remaining papers of mid-Victorian quality (Scott-James 248-50). Scott-James, then, advanced an "educational" theory in his analysis of the serious political press and echoed much of contemporary criticism of the commercial

threat to the existence of this type of paper (Fox Bourne 370-71; Hirst). At the same time, however, in discussing the function of the half-penny papers, he echoed and expanded upon the theme of the press as a "repre sentative" agent. Referring to the American press, which he saw as the

model for the British half-penny press, he argued that these papers did not help "the crowd" to think, but nevertheless insisted that

it was something that [the crowd] could be made to gasp simultaneously, even at

the order of an interested millionaire. The appearance of the Yellow Press was a

recognition of the fact that the majority of the nation not only existed, but that it

might have opinions, that it certainly had tastes, that it possessed a consciousness of

life. A popular Press - that is to say, a Press which can

appeal to the least persons

in a nation, and to all of them - is at least a step towards the democratic ideal of an

articulate nation. (Scott-James 160-61)

Scott-James credited both the American press and its imitator, the Brit

ish half-penny press, with helping to create a national political community

comparable to a Greek polis. The latter had been smaller and had been

based on the principle of personal communication, whereas the modern

political community, the "organic state," was based upon the publication and diffusion of information. Nevertheless, even if the readers of a news

paper did not participate in the political life of the nation in the same face

to-face manner as the citizens of a polis, Scott-James believed that not only did the press ensure that their interests were represented, but that it actu

ally integrated them into the nation by making them "articulate."

When Scott-James used the word "articulate," however, he did not

envision John Stuart Mill's "marketplace of ideas" in which every citizen

expressed his or her opinions, in order that the "true" opinion might tri



MARK HAMPTON 85

umph in open and rational discussion. Rather, he believed that a person was "articulate" so long as his or her opinion or interest was expressed

publicly by someone (Scott-James 215). The accomplishment of the New

Journalism, then, was that it expressed virtually everyone's interests and

opinions by dint of its sheer scope and diversity. In Scott-James' words,

The popular Press has at least asserted one very important fact, which is that party

politics is only a small part of the whole of public life ... whereas, if, on the con

trary, popular sentiment is allowed to play upon all the topics of life, irrespective

of party politics, it means that new public interests are thrust forward; that these

too must claim the attention of the politician; that it is no longer left to him to

choose subjects for legislation; but that legislation is thrust upon him by those

who have found independent expression of their needs. (Scott-James 278)

Significantly, once

again, Scott-James referred to readers not as those who

"express their needs," but as those who "have found independent expres sion of their needs." Nevertheless, he asserted that the press by 1913 had

become much more "representative" of the people than it had ever been in the past.

Unhappily, however, as the success of the half-penny dailies led editors

of quality papers like the Times to imitate their methods, the "influential"

classes found themselves paradoxically in danger of being rendered inar

ticulate. Like Mill, Scott-James worried that pressures toward intellectual

conformity could stifle the free expression of minority opinions. He

lamented that the press was "not yet capable of dealing with special inter

ests; it [was] still inclined to neglect minorities, even those which are the most profitable, namely, the influential minorities," an inclination that he

linked explicitly to the press' growing reliance on advertisement revenues

(Scott-James 286). It is difficult to imagine, within a discussion of the

political function of newspapers, a stronger expression of uneasiness

toward the rise of a "mass society."

Finally, what did Scott-James really mean by "influence of the press"? He appears to have meant

only that the press created a national commu

nity of people who were able to know simultaneously about the same

national concerns. He explicitly denied the ability of newspapers to oper ate at the rational level in convincing a reader of the truth of a proposi tion. On the other hand, he believed that the mid-Victorian newspapers,

by virtue of their "continuous news," possessed this ability; modern

newspapers had lost this ability because of their presentation solely of

sensationalistic and decontextualized snippets. Anticipating Habermas'

critique of the bourgeois public sphere, Scott-James insisted that those who wished to be "well informed" had to look elsewhere (284-85).2I The

modern press' ability to shape opinion existed solely at the sub-rational



S6 Victorian Periodicals Review 37:1 Spring 2004

level; as politicians knew, "the incessant pattering of ideas upon the heads

of the public is like the pattering of rain which wears down rocks." Or, more explicitly, "The knowing ones of the world have learnt that the

Press is a manifold engine for moulding, controlling, reforming, degrad

ing, cajoling, or coercing the public, while the great public reads its paper as it eats its bread, without a thought of the mighty trick that is being

played upon it" (Scott-James 13-14).

The press constituted, and constitutes, an important putative location for

the public sphere. To be sure, there have existed other sites in which the

public sphere could flourish, especially if one is willing to consider other

forms of communication than the rational argument. Nevertheless, a jux

taposition of the manner in which the British educated and professional classes discussed the press throughout the Victorian and Edwardian peri ods lends evidence that the public sphere, as a constructed ideal entailing the rational-critical discussion of ideas by private persons constituting themselves as a public, did in fact undergo an important transformation in

late-Victorian Britain.

This transformation, in turn, suggests specific conclusions about the

fortunes of liberalism in the late-nineteenth century. Debates about the

continuities between liberalism and labourism have often emphasized the

perspectives of party membership and specific policies of reform. These

perspectives, however, perhaps overstate the continuities. However much

of an overlap existed between the ideas and personnel of the Liberal and

Labour parties, the liberal ideal of politics by discussion retreated consid

erably in the last decades before World War I. More broadly, however, this transformation reflects in the elite classes an increasing fear of the

irrational "masses" and a corresponding

retreat from claiming to use the

press -

the period's dominant medium of mass communication - as a

means of expanding the political nation. For most elite observers, the

press had, instead, become a commodity sold to mass publics whose par

ticipation in national political life could, hopefully, be confined to choos

ing which newspaper to buy. In this imagining, the idealized public

sphere fragmented and citizenship was redefined as consumer choice.22

Wesleyan College

NOTES

i This article is based upon a selective presentation of primary source material.

A more thorough body of evidence is available in my forthcoming book,

provisionally entitled Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850-1950 (Urbana and

Chicago: U of Illinois P, 2004).



MARK HAMPTON 87

2 The phrase belongs, famously, to Raymond Williams. See Williams 64-88. 3 For a critical discussion of the idea of a "mass society," within the context of a

broader discussion of "images of society," see Williams 120-42, esp. 129-30.

For a discussion of Londoners' fears of the rise of the "masses," see G. S. Jones

197. For a provocative discussion of British elites' antipathy

to mass society

during this time, see Carey. In addition, LeMahieu examines the response of

the "cultivated elites" to the rise of mass culture in early-twentieth century

Britain.

4 Notable examples of this historiography of liberalism include Dangerfield; J. Vincent; Parry; P. Clarke, Lancashire; P. Clarke, Liberals; Bernstein; Biagini;

Biagini and Reid; Vernon; Joyce, Visions; Joyce, Democratic. See Trentmann

for a recent challenge to this prevailing historiography. For a critical synthesis

of recent approaches to the history of nineteenth-century popular politics,

see

McWilliam, Popular. 5 For a masterful discussion of working-class readers who read for much more

serious purposes, see Rose.

6 This essay does not attempt to contribute to recent debates on the primacy of

class as a category of Victorian subjectivity. Discussions of the press consti

tuted an exemplary site in which participants attempted to transcend class, but

naturally this attempt should not be accepted at face value. For recent scholar

ship that has challenged the primacy of class, see Poovey; Joyce, Visions; Joyce, Democratic. For recent statements of the importance and the complexities of

class consciousness, see Epstein, Radical; Epstein, "Turn"; Price. See also

J. Clarke.

7 See, for example, Schudson; Kramer; Eley; Mah.

8 Habermas regards the late-nineteenth century as the period in which the bour

geois public sphere declined; real "opinion" was now created in private, and

the public arena became a forum merely for the "publicizing" and "consump tion" of privately-created opinion. The role of the press is central to the con

cept of the public sphere; in Habermas' thesis, the press ideally serves as a

medium for the free exchange of ideas and the consequent formation of public

opinion. See Habermas 181-235; Calhoun.

9 See Curran; Curran and Seaton chapter 3; Altick chapter 7. For a discussion of

a similar concept with regard to mid-Victorian pictorial magazines, see Patri

cia Anderson chapters 4 and 6. Anderson presents attempts of pictorial maga

zine owners to employ fiction and pictorial images in order to reinforce

standards of social behavior that they believed appropriate to their readers'

stations.

10 Wiener has, in fact, identified both the "educational" and "representative"

strands of press theory in his work on the unstamped press, although he does

not use these terms, and he has linked them respectively to the middle classes

and the working classes. See also Gilmartin, chapter 1; Hollis.

11 See, for example, National Political Union 7.




12 A second side of the "representative" ideal, which I have excluded for the sake

of brevity, championed the press' focus on commonplace, less overtly political

concerns that were more "representative" of ordinary people's daily lives. See

Hampton, "Understanding" 226-28. For contrasting views on whether this

focus on the commonplace is best described as "authenticity"

or "depoliticiza

tion," see Chalaby; Conboy.

13 On Stead's career, see Boston; Schults; Baylen.

14 In Stead, "Future," Stead proposed a very elaborate mechanism for ascertain

ing public opinion. Nevertheless, even this article ultimately requires the edi

tor to decide what constitutes public opinion, rather than allowing the readers

to speak for themselves.

15 See Joyce, Democratic 204-13; Walkowitz 81-120. On the uses of melodrama

as a historical category or tool, see McWilliam, "Melodrama."

16 Or as a contemporary editor of a "quality" paper would be expected

to do. As

Wohl has pointed out, however obviously evil the Turks' bayonetting babies

might seem, the "realist" approach to

foreign policy was a

respected tradition

whose merits could be seriously argued. See Wohl 385.

17 For the context in which these statements were made, and an examination of

an attempt to transform journalism into a profession comparable

to the legal or medical professions,

see Hampton, "Journalists."

18 Frederick Greenwood made a similar point about the decline of newspaper's

power since Palmerston's era, when the Times dominated "public opinion";

Greenwood attributed the declining influence of any single paper to the wide

diffusion of many papers. See Greenwood.

19 See, e.g., Dicey. Of course, as Harris notes, many in Britain continued to view

society in terms of the atomistic collection of individual members; the shift is

only relative. Similarly, Waters has shown the powerful motivation of the ideal

of "improvement" and "rational recreation" among late-Victorian and Edwar

dian socialists; clearly, not everyone had given up on the idea of "educating"

and "elevating" the working classes.

20 Yet Jackson has recently shown the great extent to which even the Gazette,

owned by George Newnes, had adopted the practices of the New Journalism.

See Jackson 129-62.

21 Habermas argues that around the turn of the twentieth century, the press

ceased to provide

a forum for the creation of public opinion. Henceforth,

"opinion" was

developed in non-public forums, such as in think tanks. In

"public," pre-formed opinions were now

"presented" for "consumption." See

Habermas chapters 20-22.

22 For compelling arguments about the function of the twentieth-century popu

lar press in preserving the political status quo, through its focus on less "seri

ous" topics, see

Sparks; Chalaby 183-93. See also Richards.



MARK HAMPTON 89

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Documents

Liberalism, the Press, and the Construction of the Public Sphere: Theories of the Press in Britain, 1830-1914