which will not bear defence, and which its judicious friends prefer to pass over in silence. But a journalist cannot keep silent. The Government may require him to hold his tongue, but the reader demands that he shall speak; and as the public supplies the sinews of war, and pays for the prophet's robes, he is sooner or later compelled to break with the Government and to reproach it for not listening to the advice of its friends in time. Moreover, in a country in which the press is free and newspapers abound, a party which contains a majority of the people cannot fail to have the support of a large and influential portion of the press. Its conductors, though prophets, do not wear camel's hair, nor is their diet locusts and wild honey. They form part of the community, live among the voters, and share, to a greater or less extent, their prejudices and expectations and sympathies. Every party, therefore, is sure, as long as it has a strong hold on the public, of having a strong hold on the press, and of having a considerable number of the most influential editors among its defenders. One of the sure signs that it is losing its hold on the public is the defection of the press or its growing lukewarmness. Newspapers cannot, perhaps, build a party up or pull one down, but when you see the newspapers deserting a party it is all but proof that the agencies which dissolve a political organization are at work. The successful editors may have no originating power or no organizing power, and no capacity for legislation, and may even want the prophetic instinct; but a certain intuitive sense of the direction in which the tide of popular feeling is running is the principal condition of their success, and an anxious politician may therefore always safely credit them with possessing it. If they had not had it, their papers would not have succeeded.