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194 Newspapers, 1775-1860 brought into play his intimate acquaintance with men of af- fairs to open up the sources of information. Above all he set a new standard for foreign service. The American public never had a more general and intelligent interest in European affairs than in the middle years of the nineteenth century. The lead- ing papers directed their best efforts toward sustaining and improving their foreign service, and Raymond used a brief vacation in Europe to establish for his paper a system of corre- spondence as trustworthy, if not as inclusive, as that of the Herald or Tribune. If our newspapers today are immeasur- ably in advance of those of sixty years ago in almost every field of journalism, there is only here and there anything to compare in worth with the foreign correspondence of that time. The men who wrote from the news centres of Europe were persons of wide political knowledge and experience, and social consequence. They had time and abiHty to do their work thoroughly, carefully, and intelligently, innocent of super- ficial effort toward sensation, of the practices of inaccurate brevity and irresponsible haste which began with the laying of the Atlantic cable. The theory of journalism announced by Raymond in the Times marks another advance over the party principles of his predecessors. He thought that a newspaper might asstmie the r61e now of a party paper, now of an organ of non-partisan, independent thought, and still be regarded by the great body of its readers as steadUy guided by principles of sincere public policy. An active ambition for political preferment prevented him from achieving this ideal. Although he professed conserva- tism only in those cases where conservatism was essential to the public good and radicalism in everything which might require radical treatment and radical reform, the spirit of opposition to the Tribune, as well as his temperamental leanings, carried him definitely to the conservative side. He was by nature inclined to accept the established order and make the best of it. Change, if it came, should come not through radical agita- tion and revolution, but by cautious and gradual evolution. The world needed brushing, not harrowing. Such ideas, as he applied them to journalism, appealed to moderate men, re- flected the opinions of a large and influential class somewhere between the advanced thinkers and theorists and the mass of