For many months in this past year, and in the year before that, hundreds of anonymous correspondents and leader-writers of the English Press have been doing their utmost by violence of language to drive to war the nations of England and of France. Is it not probable, even certain, that if all these writers had been obliged to sign their names to these furious articles, they would have paused before making themselves responsible for such language? I am often accused of using too strong language; but at all events I sign whatever I say, and I should be ashamed to do otherwise. An anonymous Press possesses dangerous privileges; such privileges as the mask gives a masquerade; it also, as I have said, acquires a dignity and an importance which are not its own; it is unfair and harmful; it protects exaggeration, hyperbole, flattery, and calumny, but it is too useful to too many not to be sustained; it can always serve the Bourses much better than a signed Press could do, and obey much more efficiently the nods and signs and cypher dispatches of the great financiers; but it is cowardly, and can easily, if it chooses, be dishonest. It will, perhaps, be objected that the anonymity of the Press is more apparent than real; that the greater writers of the London Press at least are all recognised by their style, or well known by the initiated; but this knowledge is limited to a few hundred persons, and can never be shared by the general public, and it is on the general public that anonymous journalism has its chief influence. To whom or what can we look for the pressure of an influence which would enforce honesty in literature? To public opinion? Undoubtedly we might, and we should, if public opinion were what it should be. But it is not, and, most probably, never will be. Breeding and manners grow worse every day; and it is they alone which could enforce that unwritten code which is so sorely needed. It is, after all, the absence of moral and honourable feeling in the world in general which makes the violation of these not only condoned by others but frequently profitable to the sinners. Take two instances of this: The sale of private letters both of the living and of the dead; and the seizure of the plots and characters of romances by people who are themselves dramatic adapters. The latter is the more trivial offence of the two; but it is as impudent as it is dishonest. It is injurious in a great degree, and extremely annoying to the original author, whose name is bawled and placarded about in connection with that of his robber, with no consent of his own, and usually to his extreme irritation, whilst his ideas are borrowed, and his characters travestied, and his entire creation belittled and vulgarised. Would the stalls be filled nightly to witness pieces stolen in this manner were the public governed by any unwritten law of respect for _meum_ and _tuum_?