As we stand on the verge of state-licensed newspapers, a dreadful prophecy is being fulfilled

As soon as the State has taken its bent to authority and philanthropy, and laid the least touch on private property, the days of the independent journal are numbered

By Allan Massie

When do you think this passage was written and – a more difficult question – by whom?

“We are all becoming Socialists without knowing it … A little while ago and we were all for Liberty … This is over; laissez-faire declines in favour; our legislation grows authoritative, grows philanthropical, bristles with new duties and new penalties, and casts a spawn of inspectors, who now begin, note-book in hand, to darken the face of England. It may be right or wrong, we are not trying that; but one thing it is beyond doubt: it is Socialism in action, and the strange thing is that we scarcely know it…”

Now I have cut a few phrases which might have given the game away – a mention of a certain “Mr Hyndman and his horn-blowing supporters”, for instance. Nevertheless it’s probable that the elegance of the prose, and the use of the word “authoritative” rather than “authoritarian”, will have suggested to you that it wasn’t written yesterday. In fact, as you may have guessed, the essay from which I have abstracted these sentences was published towards the end of the 19th century. It is entitled “The Day After To-morrow”, and that day, that tomorrow, are long behind us. Yet there are things in the essay which are confoundedly up to date.

Socialism, the author points out, will be imposed, or brought about, by Acts of Parliament. “Well,” he writes, “we all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it … Decay appears to have seized on the organ of popular government in every land; and this just at the moment when we begin to bring to it, as to an oracle of justice, the whole skein of our private affairs to be unravelled, and ask it, like a new Messiah, to take upon itself the part that should be played by our own virtues. For that, in few words, is the case. We cannot trust ourselves to behave with decency; we cannot trust our consciences; and the remedy proposed is to elect a round number of our neighbours, pretty much at random, and say to these: ‘Be ye our conscience; make laws so wise , and continue from year to year to administer them so wisely, that they shall save us from ourselves, and make us righteous and happy, world without end. Amen.' And who can look twice at the British Parliament and then seriously bring it to such a task?"

Who indeed? And yet, more than 120 years after these words were written, that same Parliament is passing ever more laws, and administering them ever more energetically, if not wisely, in order to make us, if not “righteous and happy”, then obedient and well-behaved. Despairing of human nature, we trust in the state.

The author of this essay looked forward, without enthusiasm, to “the golden age of officials”. That age has arrived. He foresaw that “if the Socialistic programme be carried out with the least fulness, we shall have lost a thing in most respects not to be regretted, but, as a moderator of oppression, a thing nearly invaluable – the newspaper. For the independent journal is a creature of capital and competition; it stands and falls with millionaires and railway-bonds and all the abuses and glories of today; and as soon as the State has fairly taken its bent to authority and philanthropy, and laid the least touch on private property, the days of the independent journal are numbered. State railways may be good things, and so may State bakeries; but a State newspaper will never be a very trenchant critic of the State officials."

Quite so; what then of state-licensed newspapers which is what we are threatened with today? At first there might be very little change, but gradually the twin forces of authority and philanthropy would impose new restrictions. “Philanthropy?", you may say, “surely that is a good thing, something to be approved and admired?” So indeed it is, in general and in the abstract. But practice may be different. In the present argument about control, or regulation, of the press, philanthropy is represented by the Hacked Off campaigners, disgusted, with reason, by the behaviour of newspapers. Let us admit that some of the behaviour of which they complain has indeed been disgusting. Yet the door they have opened in search of a remedy leads into territory which is more dangerous for the public good, territory where the ability of the press to call to account the excesses of officials, politicians and the state may be first threatened, then curtailed. Bring the press to heel and the power of the official is enhanced. Is this desirable?

The essay from which I have quoted was, as I said, written a long time ago. Yet much of it is confoundedly true today, and confoundedly disturbing, partly because so much of what its author foresaw has become our reality. “If these things go on,” he said, “we shall see, or our sons shall see, what it is to have offended an inspector.” Quite so.

And to my second question: who was the author? Answer: Robert Louis Stevenson. I wonder how many of you have guessed. I wonder too how many fear that the well-intentioned, indeed philanthropic, comprehensive state we have created, or allowed to be created, over the generations since Stevenson considered what the day after tomorrow might be like – a state we may choose to think of as being in its origins as benevolent as Dr Jekyll – is gradually transforming itself into Mr Hyde?