Wonder forwarded this article from the Times about Hilaire Belloc. The cranky little journals he writes about sure do sound like blogs to me too. Though the article’s author (writing for the biggest paper in the country) is a bit biased in thinking that media nowadays has embraced the free press ideas that Belloc is talking about.

The Official Press, Belloc argues, is centralized and Capitalist (he always capitalizes Capitalist), and its owners are “the true governing power in the political machinery of the State, superior to the officials in the State, nominating ministers and dismissing them, imposing policies, and, in general, usurping sovereignty — all this secretly and without responsibility.” The result “is that the mass of Englishmen have ceased to obtain, or even to expect, information upon the way they are governed.”