[The "Englishman's Register" was a weekly newspaper which Dr. Arnold undertook in 1831, during the alarm and agitation which prevailed throughout the country at the time of the passing of the Reform Bill; "more," he said, "to relieve his own conscience, than with any sanguine hope of doing good;" but "earnestly desiring to speak to the people the words of truth and soberness,-to tell them plainly the evils that exist, and lead them, if he could, to their causes and remedies." It died a natural death in a few weeks; partly from his want of leisure to control it properly, and from the great expense which it entailed upon him,-partly from the want of cordial sympathy in any of the existing parties of the country. (See Life and Correspondence, vol. i. c. vi.) The following Extracts consist of most of the leading articles which he contributed to it, and though of a more temporary and homely character than the other contents of this volume, have been inserted as the best illustration of the views on which he thought that a popular newspaper should be conducted.] EXTRACTS FROM THE ENGLISHMAN'S REGISTER. [From No. 1, May 7, 1831.] (1.) OUR OBJECT. THE country is filled with newspapers, and yet we are here offering to the public a new one. Of course we suppose therefore that something is wanted which other journals do not supply, or that there is some evil mixed with their good, which needlessly lessens their usefulness. We do think that an honest, a fair, and a high-principled journal is yet wanting-wanting for all classes of persons; but above all, for those who cannot afford time or money to read much, and who are therefore most apt to be influenced by the tone and sentiments of the little which they do read. We think that in a Christian country the tone of a public journal ought to be decidedly Christian; -we think that a publication professing to give a true impression of the state of things should not hold a certain set of opinions in a lump, because they are commonly found united in the same persons, but should pick out and admire the truth which may exist on one side amidst a mass of errors, and renounce and expose the falsehood which may be mingled on the other side with views in the main true. We think, above all, that a newspaper should be thoroughly independent-independent of all undue influence, whether aristocratical or popular; for it is as base and as wicked to pander to the violence and ignor ance of the people as to screen or palliate the follies and oppressions of the great. We wish our journal to be read; but we should be ashamed to purchase its circulation by omitting any thing which our conscience bids us publish, or by indulging in any unfairness or violence which, if lying on our death bed, we should look back upon with regret. But these are mere general professions. To come to particulars we see around us one vast and fearful struggle going on between the friends of things as they are and the advocates of change. Not in England only, but all over Europe, this contest is raging, and no man who loves his country or mankind ought to remain neutral in it. But the misfortune is, that they whose voices are heard the loudest on both sides in this quarrel are so foolish or so unprincipled as to make the triumph of either an object of just apprehension. Who can wish success to that blind ignorance which cannot see that all things are and must be for ever changing ?-that it is worse than kicking against the pricks to oppose our vain efforts to an eternal and universal law of God's providence; and that by striving against change we do not prevent it from coming, but only render it violent and injurious, when it might have been natural and beneficial. England cannot remain what it has been; and the endeavour to detain a state of things which is passing away is, at the best, a waste of those efforts which might be better employed in preparing for the approaching and inevitable change, and in making the passage from the old system to the new as easy and imperceptible as possible. To the anti-reformers therefore, both in church and state, we are decidedly opposed; but with a large party of the reformers we have quite as little sympathy. They cry for change as blindly as their adversaries oppose it; they overrate existing evils, and hope to cure them by remedies which are either wholly inadequate, or have nothing at all to do with the mischief complained of. They think too 1 highly of themselves and of their own times, while they despise that knowledge of former times which can alone make us wiser than our fathers by giving us the advantage of their experience. Above all, while professing to release men from unjust and absurd restraints, they have forgotten that there is yet a worse evil on the other side-an absence of any restraint whatever. Reformers are especially bound to enforce the authority of the laws of conscience and of God while they are exposing the weakness and corruption of the laws of men; for of all possible states of degradation and misery none can be so horrible as that religious and moral anarchy where men are the slaves of all their evil passions, hateful and hating one another. We may be wrong, or our call may be too feeble to be heard with any effect; but our hope is to rally those, and we believe they are many, who feel in these tremendous times as we do who are disgusted alike with the folly and iniquity that would keep all things as they are, and with the no less foolish and unprincipled violence that would destroy rather than reform, and which pollutes even reform itself by its unchristian spirit and sentiments. Of the many evils which the anti-reformers have brought upon their country, none is so great as this-that the holiest things have been blasphemed through their fault— that Christianity itself has been represented as hostile to truth and liberty, because so many of those who have professed it most zealously, have used its authority in political matters rather for evil than for good. But, in spite of all this, infidelity is far from having deeply infected the people of England. Against this evil Englishmen possess the best preservative in the general circulation of the Scriptures throughout the country; for where the Bible is well known and commonly studied, all honest minds are sufficiently fortified against the poison of our English infidels. The contrast between the principles and spirit of the gospel, and those of our most famous unbelievers |