It is not alleged by our Jeremiah that the newspapers have “declined and fallen off” in circulation. I write without statistics and making a mere intelligent guess when I estimate that there are at least four times as many copies of newspapers sold in a day in London now as were sold in 1870. Here, at least, there is no indication of decline; and if there be anything at all in the law of supply and demand, we are bound to infer that the proprietors of newspapers must be supplying that which the public demands. Public taste is not created or directed by newspapers. The clever editor is he who shrewdly anticipates the direction of the public taste, and caters for it. It is a _flair_ which the editor may possess in common with the theatrical manager and the _restaurateur_. He exercises it in exactly the same way as George Edwardes exercises it or as “Jo” Lyons exercises it. “Find out what the fool of a public wants, and give it to ’em!” was the advice given me once by the managing director of a syndicate of newspapers of the North of England. And it was sound advice. If this view of the whole duty of the modern editor be correct, it involves the admission that the newspaper of to-day has abandoned its ancient traditions, just as it has thrown aside the worn-out clichés. Half the disgust of the journalistic Jeremiah with the new order is caused, I believe, by the abandonment of those time-honoured clichés. He endures a pang of regret and resentment when, in reading the account of a fire, he finds no allusion to “the devouring element.” He is incapable of understanding that the public does not care any more for “the devouring element,” and that the penny-a-liner has been superseded by the crime investigator and other weird officials called into existence by the new reader of newspapers. When our poor old Jeremiah was young, the newspaper was, primarily, the organ of a party—sometimes its official organ, but always, whether officially or unofficially, representing one of the great political parties. Nominally, indeed, it is so still. But there is no underlying enthusiasm, nor is there any continuity of conviction. Many of our “esteemed contemporaries” are, ostentatiously, rail-sitters. But the Press has ceased to have any influence with Cabinets, nor are editors any longer consulted by Cabinet Ministers. No editor will ever again hold the position with regard to Ministers held by Dr. Giffard of the _Morning Herald_, or John Delane of the _Times_. By the way, the Conservative party owed a great deal more than they were ever willing to acknowledge to the said Dr. Giffard. I suppose that they considered that they had wiped out the debt when they made his son Lord Chancellor and an Earl! One of these days we shall find politics left out of our papers save at election times, when the space will be hired by persons wishing to advertise their political convictions.