In bygone ages crime existed, of course, but it was not blazoned in headlines to the public.

Good and brave deeds were praised and recorded, and as a consequence--perhaps as a result of imitation--there were many heroes.

In our times a good or brave deed is squeezed into an obscure paragraph,--while intellect and brilliant talent receive scarcely any acknowledgment--the silly doings of 'society' and the Court are the chief matter,--hence, possibly, the preponderance of dunces and flunkeys, again produced by sheer 'imitativeness.' Is it pleasant for a man with starvation at his door, to read that a king pays two thousand a year to his cook?
That same two thousand comes out of the pockets of the nation--and the starving man thinks some of it ought to fall in _his_ way instead of providing for a cooker of royal victuals! There is no end to the mischief generated by the publication of such snobbish statements, whether true or false.

This was the kind of irresponsible talk that set Jean-Jacques Rousseau thinking and writing, and kindling the first spark of the fire of the French Revolution.

'Royal-Flunkey' methods of journalism provoke deep resentment in the public mind,--for a king after all is only the paid servant of the people--he is not an idol or a deity to which an independent nation should for ever crook the knee.