Modern agricultural society insists upon publicity.  The smallest village event must be chronicled, or some one will feel dissatisfied, and inquire why it was not put in the paper.  This continual looking towards the paper for everything causes it to exercise a very considerable amount of influence.  Perhaps the clergy and gentry are in some things less powerful than the local newspaper, for, from a variety of causes, agricultural society has become extremely sensitive to public opinion.  The temperate and thoughtful arguments put forward by a paper in which they have confidence directly affect the tenant-farmers.  On the other hand, as expressing the views of the tenant-farmers, the paper materially influences the course taken by the landed proprietors.

In country districts the mere numerical circulation of a weekly publication is no measure of its importance.  The position of the subscribers is the true test.  These old-established papers, in fact, represent property.  They are the organs of all who possess lands, houses, stock, produce; in short, of the middle class.  This is evident from the advertising columns.  The lawyer, the auctioneer, the land agent, the farmer, all who have any substance, publish their business in this medium.  Official county advertisements appear in it.  The carter and the shepherd look down the column of situations vacant as they call at the village inn for a glass of ale, or, if they cannot read, ask some one to read for them.  But they do not purchase this kind of newspaper.  The cottager spells over prints advocating the disestablishment of the Church, the division of great estates, and the general subversion of the present order of things.  Yet when the labourer advertises, he goes to the paper subscribed to by his master.  The disappearance of such an obsolete and expensive paper is frequently announced as imminent; but the obsolete and expensive print, instead of disappearing, nourishes with renewed vitality.  Solid matter, temperate argument, and genuine work, in the long ran, pay the best.  An editor who thus conducts his paper is highly appreciated by the local chiefs of his party, and may even help to contribute to the success of an Administration.

The personal labour involved in such editing must be great from the absence of trained assistance, and because the materials must be furnished by incompetent hands.  Local news must be forwarded by local people, perhaps by a village tailor with literary tastes.  Such correspondents often indulge in insinuations, or fulsome flattery, which must be carefully eliminated.  From another village an account of some event comes from the schoolmaster—­quite an important person nowadays!—­who writes in a fair, round hand and uses the finest language and the longest words.  He invariably puts ‘hebdomadal’ for ‘weekly.’  A lawyer’s clerk writes a narrative of some case, on blue foolscap, and, after the manner of legal documents, without a single stop from beginning to end.