which was destined to supply the operative classes with employment.
In the same time they brought us accounts of riots for bread, which
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were constantly occurring, and undermining society and the state;
of the most terrible explosions of class against class, and of the
habitual employment of spies for the discovery – if not for the
origination – of plots, in which both sides found in those days
some relief. In the same time the same newsmen were apprising us
of a state of society all around us in which the grossest
sensuality and intemperance were the rule; and not as now, when the
ignorant, the wicked, and the wretched are the inexcusably vicious
exceptions – a state of society in which the professional bully was
rampant, and when deadly duels were daily fought for the most
absurd and disgraceful causes. All this the newsman has ceased to
tell us of. This state of society has discontinued in England for
ever; and when we remember the undoubted truth, that the change
could never have been effected without the aid of the load which
the newsman carries, surely it is not very romantic to express the
hope on his behalf that the public will show to him some little
token of the sympathetic remembrance which we are all of us glad to
bestow on the bearers of happy tidings – the harbingers of good
news.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, you will be glad to hear that I am
coming to a conclusion; for that conclusion I have a precedent.
You all of you know how pleased you are on your return from a
morning’s walk to learn that the collector has called. Well, I am
the collector for this district, and I hope you will bear in mind
that I have respectfully called. Regarding the institution on
whose behalf I have presented myself, I need only say technically
two things. First, that its annuities are granted out of its
funded capital, and therefore it is safe as the Bank; and,
secondly, that they are attainable by such a slight exercise of
prudence and fore-thought, that a payment of 25S. extending over a
period of five years, entitles a subscriber – if a male – to an
annuity of 16 pounds a-year, and a female to 12 pounds a-year.
Now, bear in mind that this is an institution on behalf of which
the collector has called, leaving behind his assurance that what
you can give to one of the most faithful of your servants shall be
well bestowed and faithfully applied to the purposes to which you
intend them, and to those purposes alone.
SPEECH: NEWSPAPER PRESS FUND. – LONDON, MAY 20, 1865.
[At the second annual dinner of the Institution, held at the
Freemasons’ Tavern, on Saturday, the 20th May, 1865, the following
speech was delivered by the chairman, Mr. Charles Dickens, in
proposing the toast of the evening:]
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, – When a young child is produced after dinner
to be shown to a circle of admiring relations and friends, it may
generally be observed that their conversation – I suppose in an
instinctive remembrance of the uncertainty of infant life – takes a
retrospective turn. As how much the child has grown since the last
dinner; what a remarkably fine child it is, to have been born only
two or three years ago, how much stronger it looks now than before
it had the measles, and so forth. When a young institution is
produced after dinner, there is not the same uncertainty or
delicacy as in the case of the child, and it may be confidently
predicted of it that if it deserve to live it will surely live, and
that if it deserve to die it will surely die. The proof of desert
in such a case as this must be mainly sought, I suppose, firstly,
in what the society means to do with its money; secondly, in the
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extent to which it is supported by the class with whom it
originated, and for whose benefit it is designed; and, lastly, in