Oscar Wilde once said: “We are dominated by journalism. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal says nothing, the Lords Spiritual has nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it.” He was discussing the Fourth Estate.
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The Fourth Estate set out to describe various forces outside parliament – such as the army (Falkland 1638) or the mob (as used by Fielding in 1752). Fielding said: “So, none of our political writers take notice of any more than the three estates, King, Lords and Commons, pass by that very large body in the community – the mob”.
In modern use, the term is applied to the press, with the earliest use described by Thomas Carlyle in his book On Heroes and Hero Worship: "Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all”.
This may have been in the back of Carlyle's mind when he wrote in his French Revolution (1837), "A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up; increases and multiplies, irrepressible, incalculable”. In this context, the other three estates are those of the French States-General: the church, the nobility and the townsmen.
Carlyle, however, may have mistaken his attribution: Thomas Macknight, writing in 1858, observes urke was merely a teller at the "illustrious nativity of the Fourth Estate". Other candidates for coining the term are Henry Brougham speaking in Parliament in 1823 or 1824, and Thomas Macaulay in an essay of 1828 reviewing Hallam's Constitutional History: "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm”.
The British government has for centuries referred to three estates – the Lord Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the Commons, i.e. the king (the crown), the lords and the commons. But the big dictionary failed to discover Carlyle attributing to Burke the statement now current. A correspondent at the time stated he heard Henry Brougham use it in the house in 1823 or 1824, and considered it genuine.
lauriebarber.com; lbword@mdcoast.com.au