Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/84

 ferent affair. It will no doubt discard many of the trivialities now reported as news, when a black woman of Timbuctoo could hardly bring forth four piccaninnies at a birth without the fact getting into the halfpenny London papers; but it will record the really important news in ways far more graphic, and with a far more complete appeal to the imagination, than we have as yet any but the vaguest notion of.

The news considered most important a hundred years hence will probably be news as to developments of public opinion. It is hardly conceivable that exactly the methods of Government which exist at present will satisfy the developed consciousness of the new time: and most likely the methods then adopted for the ascertainment of public opinion, and the machinery devised for giving it administrative effect, will create subject-matter for a type of journalism of which the very perceptible rudiments, though still nothing but the rudiments, already exist. If I am right in expecting great results to flow from new ideas and practice in our educational system, it is certain that the notion of political freedom will greatly extend its effect: and the unavoidable corollary is that movements of public thought will become a matter of the very keenest journalistic interest and of the very highest journalistic importance. The most probable means to be adopted for giving effect, in the