A copy of each morning paper is brought to him at five
o'clock. His official wagons wait at the doors of the newspaper offices
and scud to him with the first copies that come from the press. His
company of assistants read every line in these papers, and mark
everything which seems to have a dangerous look; then he passes final
judgment upon these markings. Two things conspire to give to the results
a capricious and unbalanced look: his assistants have diversified notions
as to what is dangerous and what isn't; he can't get time to examine
their criticisms in much detail; and so sometimes the very same matter
which is suppressed in one paper fails to be damned in another one, and
gets published in full feather and unmodified. Then the paper in which
it was suppressed blandly copies the forbidden matter into its evening
edition--provokingly giving credit and detailing all the circumstances in
courteous and inoffensive language--and of course the censor cannot say a
word.
Sometimes the censor sucks all the blood out of a newspaper and leaves it
colourless and inane; sometimes he leaves it undisturbed, and lets it
talk out its opinions with a frankness and vigour hardly to be surpassed,
I think, in the journals of any country.
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