have idealities in this direction, are like Diogenes of old, walking about in midday with lanterns in their hands, hunting honest men; but we see no light in their lanterns.

When we had to read of "spiritual manifestations," and of "summonings of the dead" before them, it was always a consolation to us, that we could not believe them to be true; for what greater anguish could be inflicted on spirits like those of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Jackson, Clay, Silas Wright, Webster, Benton, Van Buren, Calhoun, and Lincoln, than to make them visit our nominating conventions, our executive committee rooms, and the conclaves of our politicians? How bitter would be the reflection to them, that. much, if not all of our political ills, are due to their neglect, to establish stable public authorities, or even popular parties and organizations, that could carry on, by the aid of the whole country, and under responsibility to it, a general, well-defined public policy. Hamilton once exclaimed: "A people without a government is a terrible sight to me!" Why did he not go one step further, and say: "A popular party domineering over government, and spoliating society, is the most hideous of all tyrannies"? Neither Hamilton nor Jefferson, especially not the latter, could announce this truth, because they had the mental habit of dividing the people into two herds, one of whom they presumed to be for, and the other against their beau-ideal of government. They of course wanted the good shepherds of their flocks to govern. Jefferson often asked derisively: “Have we angels in the form of kings to govern society? But he never searched his own mind to be certain, whether his presupposition of a natural division of mankind into two parties, the one loving liberty, the other seeking to oppress, did not amount to asserting this angelic prerogative of government for his party of freedom? No such charge can be brought against Washington's idea;—that of teaching by example, of doing one's full duty to the present, and of depositing wisdom in solemn state papers, as a possession for the whole people, and for the guidance of the entire nation. We ask the observant reader to ponder well on this distinction, and perhaps he will be ready to reverse the motto that stands at the head of this chapter, and to say with a modern thinker

"All things are serious facts, events are just,
They come to men, precisely as they must."

designs or cabals of ambitious citizens.

When bad men combine, the good must

associate, else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice, in a contemptible struggle."

CHAPTER XI.

THE PRESS IN AMERICA.

"The Press is the assay office of Literature."-Westminster Review.

WHEN Jefferson declared, that "if he had to choose between a government without a free press or a free press without a government," he would prefer the latter, he begged the question twice, and missed the true point entirely. Both, a government without a free press and a free press without a government, have been impossibilities in America; they were never even probabilities. And J. Q. B. De Bow gave a much better definition in the census of 1850, when he said: "In every country the press must be regarded a great educational agency. But, when he added, "The press constitutes the aegis of American liberty," he used a misleading figure of speech; for the press is a danger as well as a shield; and both for and against liberty, according to the hands it is in, or the mode and manner of its employment. Like all educational agencies, the press is beneficial only to the degree to which it is rightfully developed and organized. The very conception, of either the parties, the schools, the churches, or the presses of a country, being its government, proves a lack of understanding of their true relations to society; for while either may be organs for special functions of government, neither should be its administrative, executive, legislative and judicial authorities. Mankind has made bitter experiences on this point with its churches, and it would be a pity if young America were to repeat them as to its press.

Mr. Jefferson shot also wide of the mark, when he speaks only of a free press and not also of a free government. Why chains for the latter, and liberty for the former alone? Is not the freedom due to one due to both? Is not the unfreedom of either the unfreedom of society? We think America has to answer both questions in the affirmative; or it will continue to have a press, that subjects society and its government to its pleasure and profit, and rides

rough-shod over what is called (sic!) "the free-est people on the globe."

One obstacle, to a correct understanding of the proper functions and relations of the press, has always been, that the popular mind would comprehend in the word only the newspapers and political journals, and that it left out the books, treatises, pamphlets, and public documents. The remark

quoted at the head of the chapter rests on a correcter definition, it includes all publications, and their action, inter and re-action on each other; for only a mutually interacting, and therefore mutually improving entire press, is not a public danger! Without this mutuality there is no reciprocal education, but there is sure to be a constant strife for mastery, and ultimately one part becomes the tyrant, the other the plaything. We say then: the press must be free within itself, yet subject to law; if it is to be the organ of freedom for society. And the better this is so, the less need is there for any restraint and correction by public authority, and vice versa. The true criterion, then, by which a nation's press must be judged, is not the degree of liberty it has, but the degree thereof, which it deserves. The state may be too weak in moral force to impose all the restraint it should, and the press may be too weak to resist an undue amount of repression. And thus we see that there may be in this matter false exercises of power as well as abuses of liberty. The happy condition is only there, where they mutually strengthen and perfect each other, and where each is too well tempered, either to submit to tyranny or to impose it. The press creates indeed its own law, but it owes society also loyalty; it must not want to govern, where it should either educate or be educated. The interests of society and its press should ever be regarded as identical, and neither should want to gain wealth and power at the expense of the other, by taking undue advantage of accidental relations. These premises are the standard, by which we propose to discuss the subject before us.

It was a trite designation to call America "the newspaper nation;" but the Irishman who heard it and wanted to know whether the country belonged to the newspapers, or the newspapers to the country, was also in point; and so was the French young diplomat, who, noticing the large number of newspapers, about the hotel of an American ambassador, wanted to know of the secretary whether they were not the real attachés of the embassy? Well! we don't know that it hurts us any, to be thought a unit with our papers.

We must have had this theory in our mind when we entered

upon our investigations in reference to this chapter; for we were disappointed to find, that the pilgrim fathers brought neither a newspaper establishment with them, nor did they institute one soon after landing. "The earliest newspaper in North America was the Boston News-Letter, issued April 24, 1704;" so says the Compendium of the United States Census, 1850, p. 154. Think of it, kind reader! A hundred years of prosperous and free white settlement in America without a newspaper! The same authority states, that "in 1720 there were but seven newspapers in the American colonies, and in 1775 but thirty-five; and of these seven were in Massachusetts, one each in New Hampshire and Georgia, two each in Rhode Island, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, three in South Carolina, four each in Connecticut and New York, and nine in Pennsylvania. The total was, in 1870, 5871; of which New York had 835; Pennsylvania, 279; Massachusetts, 259; Iowa, 233; Michigan, 211; California, 201; the rest of the states being below 200, Arizona territory having but one. The preponderance of Pennsylvania in 1775 was no doubt due to the presence of Franklin-the press educator par excellence in America. This is another instance of the lesson culled from history by political science; to wit: "that the centre of public intelligence and power always follows the best educators of a people." It is now in New York, because there the press is most influenced by the highest educating cause— 'commerce"; for it has the world at large for its lesson-book; and this carries with it encouragement of enlightening authorship.

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In 1810 the total number of papers was 359; in 1828, 852; in 1840, 1631. And of the latter number 138 were daily, 1141 weekly, 125 semi-weekly, 227 monthly, &c. New York had then already secured preponderance, but the editorial talent was still largely in the weeklies. They made the politics of the United States, and they were chiefly the recruiting offices for the editorial capacities in the dailies and periodicals. University education, or general culture, were not yet deemed essential for an editorship; indeed, we may say, it would have been rather in the way of editorial success.

By 1850 the census gives us, beside the number of papers and their subdivisions, also the number of annual issues; the total of the latter being 426,500,000, of which the dailies had 235,000,000, the weekly, 153,000,000, the semi and tri weekly, 17,000,000, and the monthlies, semi-monthlies, and quarterlies about 20,000,000; the more solid reading now being about one-fifth of the whole, if counted by the number of issues. But this proportion changes, if we compute the number of houses or families in which the respective papers were taken. The dailies

went into about 750,000 houses; the weeklies into about 3,000,000 of families; the monthlies into about 700,000 families; the semi-monthlies into about a half a million; and the quarterlies only into about 25,000. The largest amount of instruction, as a mere question of quantity, was therefore then still conveyed through the weeklies; and we have no doubt it was also the best in general quality; though the monthlies and semi-monthlies were fully up to the weeklies, in imparting the more substantial mental food. They qualified, we think, more men for public and semi-public life, than all the remainder put together, though it is doubtless true that the largest amount of political reading was still done through the weeklies. We are without data as to the extent of book-reading and other standard instruction (general culture). The census tells us only: that $15,000,000 were expended upon "the newspaper and periodical department of the press," which would make about $5 for each family; and we estimate that about three and a half millions, or $1 per family, were expended on books, of which one-fourth was for Bibles. The census estimate is, "that all the issues of one year would cover one hundred square miles (about three townships); that it would constitute a belt of thirty feet around the earth, and weigh nearly seventy millions of pounds." The great comedian of that period, Thorn, asked, when he read this, "Well! and what of it?" An erudite gentleman wanted to know whether length, breadth, or weight was the criterion? Or the contents and their cultural effect? Is not a Shakespeare, a Goethe, Schiller, Dante, Cervantes, or Cicero daily read and remembered, worth more than all the daily and weekly trash, which the American people read and forget? The question is a leading one, but we cannot now discuss it, for we must proceed with our statistics.

In 1870 the total number of annual issues rose to fifteen hundred millions, which would, by the same calculation, cover a good-sized county, weigh 280 millions of pounds, and constitute a belt of 120 feet around the earth. The total number of newspaper establishments was 5871, of which 574 were dailies, 4295 weeklies, 272 were semi or tri weekly, 96 semi-monthly, 622 monthly, 13 bi-monthly, 49 quarterly. The dailies are about one-tenth of the total number of issues, the weeklies near three-fourths, the monthlies and periodicals about one-eighth. They reach, proportioned to houses and families, as follows: The dailies two and a half millions of houses, the weeklies about six and a half millions of families; the monthlies over five millions of families. This shows, that one-fourth of all the houses and nine-tenths of all the commercial establishments