The Statesman. No. I.-JUNE, 1880. PREFATORY NOTE. THE STATESMAN was discontinued as a weekly paper at the end of February last, partly because the cost of the journal was found to be heavier than Mr. Knight had estimated it would be, but mainly because his health did not permit him to endure the strain which it put upon him in that form. He now resumes the publication in the form of a Monthly Review, partly out of deference to many earnest requests that he would not abandon it altogether, but continue it in such form as his health might permit; and partly because of his own personal conviction of the necessity for some such journal in the Metropolitan Press. The STATESMAN has a distinct raison d'étre for its existence, and is published not as a literary speculation, but for the enforcement of principles in the conduct of home and foreign affairs, and more particularly in the administration of our great Empire in India, that seem to him and his colleagues to have fallen fatally out of sight with many of the leading journals in this Metropolis. It is matter of no surprise to its conductors that the general Elections have resulted in driving the Beaconsfield administration from power. Whether the proverbial advantage of distance gave them a clearer political insight than was general, or from other causes, they never for an instant believed that the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Pall Mall Gazette, or Vanity Fair, reflected either the intellectual convictions, or the conscience of the country. They never hesitated, therefore, to avow in India their full belief that the first general Election would scatter the Tory phalanx to the winds. The STATESMAN was established in London to be a protest against that divorce between politics and morality which characterized the statesmanship of the late Ministry, and which, unhappily, received the sanction of so many influential newspapers in the Metropolis. In opposition to such views, we hold that a statesmanship which is not instinct with morality, is written in the dust; and that the support which was given to Lord Beaconsfield's Cabinet by the journals we have named, reflects the deepest dishonour upon them as exponents of public thought. The profound conviction of our own mind is, that it is "Righteousness that exalteth a nation; " and that a course which is morally B |