spapers on the Continent are all more or less under a certain
degree of control, and the most prominent among them are the organs of
political parties, or of leading public men; and it is not unnatural
that Governments and Parties on the Continent should think that
English newspapers are published under similar conditions.

But in this country all thriving newspapers are commercial
undertakings, and are conducted on commercial principles, and none
others are able long to maintain an existence. Attempts have often
been made to establish newspapers to be directed by political men,
and to be guided by the same considerations by which those men would
govern their own conduct, but such papers have seldom succeeded.
The Peelite Party tried some years ago such an experiment with the
_Morning Chronicle_, but after spending a very large sum of money
on the undertaking they were obliged to give it up. The _Times_ is
carried on as a large commercial enterprise, though, of course, with
certain political tendencies and bias, but mainly with a view to
profit upon the large capital employed.

The actual price at which each copy of the newspaper is sold barely
pays the expense of paper, printing, and establishment; it is indeed
said that the price does not repay those expenses. The profit of
the newspaper arises from the price paid for advertisements, and
the greater the number of advertisements the greater the profit. But
advertisements are sent by preference to the newspaper which has the
greatest circulation; and that paper gets the widest circulation which
is the most amusing, the most interesting, and the most instructive.
A dull paper is soon left off. The proprietors and managers of the
_Times_ therefore go to great expense in sending correspondents to all
parts of the world where interesting events are taking place, and they
employ a great many able and clever men to write articles upon all
subjects which from time to time engage public attention; and as
mankind take more pleasure in reading criticism and fault-finding than
praise, because it is soothing to individual vanity and conceit to
fancy that the reader has become wiser than those about whom he reads,
so the _Times_, in order to maintain its circulation, criticises
freely everybody and everything; and especially events and persons,
and Governments abroad, because such strictures are less likely to
make enemies at home than violent attacks upon parties and persons in
t