[Speech of Whitelaw Reid at the 108th annual banquet of the Chamber
of Commerce of the State of New York, May 4, 1876. Samuel D.
Babcock, President of the Chamber, was in the chair, and proposed
the following toast, to which Mr. Reid was called upon for a
response: "The Press--right or wrong; when right, to be kept right;
when wrong, to be set right."]
MR. PRESIDENT:--Lastly, Satan came also, the printer's, if not
the public's devil, _in propria persona_! [Laughter.] The rest of you
gentlemen have better provided for yourselves. Even the Chamber of
Commerce took the benefit of clergy. The Presidential candidates and the
representatives of the Administration and the leading statesmen who
throng your hospitable board, all put forward as their counsel the
Attorney-General [Alphonso Taft] of the United States. And, as one of
his old clients at my left said a moment ago, "a precious dear old
counsel he was." [Laughter.]
The Press is without clergymen or counsel; and you doubtless wish it
were also without voice. At this hour none of you have the least desire
to hear anything or to say anything about the press. There are a number
of very able gentlemen who were ranged along that platform--I utterly
refuse to say whether I refer to Presidential candidates or not--but
there were a number of very able gentlemen who were ranged along that
table, who are very much more anxious to know what the press to-morrow
morning will have to say about them [laughter], and I know it because I
saw the care with which they handed up to the reporters the manuscript
copies of their entirely unprepared and extempore remarks. [Laughter.]
Gentlemen, the press is a mild-spoken and truly modest institution which
never chants its own praises. Unlike Walt Whitman, it never celebrates
itself. Even if it did become me--one of the youngest of its conductors
in New York--to undertake at this late hour to inflict upon you its
eulogy, there are two circumstances which might well make me pause. It
is an absurdity for me--an absurdity, indeed, for any of us--to assume
to speak for the press of New York at a table where William Cullen
Bryant sits silent. Besides, I have been reminded since I came here, by
Dr. Chapin, that the pithiest eulogy ever pronounced upon the first
editor of America, was pronounced in this very room and from that very
platform by the man who at that time was the first of living editors in
this country, when he said that he honored the memory of Benjamin
Franklin because he was a journeyman printer who did not drink, a
philosopher who wrote common sense, and an office-holder who did not
steal. [Applause.]
One word only of any seriousness about your toast; it says: "The
Press--right or wrong; when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be
set right." Gentlemen, this is your affair. A stream will not rise
higher than its fountain. The Hudson River will not flow backward over
the Adirondacks. The press of New York is fed and sustained by the
commerce of New York, and the press of New York to-day, bad as it is in
many respects--and I take my full share of the blame it fairly
deserves--is just what the merchants of New York choose to have it. If
you want it better, you can make it better. So long as you are satisfied
with it as it is, sustain it as it is, take it into your families and
into your counting-rooms as it is, and encourage it as it is, it will
remain what it is.
If, for instance, the venerable leader of your Bar, conspicuous through
a long life for the practice of every virtue that adorns his profession
and his race, is met on his return from the very jaws of the grave, as
he re-enters the Court-room to undertake again the gratuitous
championship of your cause against thieves who robbed you, with the
slander that he is himself a thief of the meanest kind, a robber of
defenceless women--I say if such a man is subject to persistent
repetition of such a calumny in the very city he has honored and
served, and at the very end and crown of his life, it is because you do
not choose to object to it and make your objection felt. A score of
similar instances will readily occur to anyone who runs over in his
memory the course of our municipal history for the last dozen years, but
there is no time to repeat or even to refer to them here.
And so, Mr. President, because this throng of gentlemen, gathered about
the doors, pay me the too great compliment by remaining standing to
listen when they have started to go home--let me come back to the text
you gave me, and the sentiment with which we began: "The Press--right or
wrong; when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set right."
[Applause.] The task in either case is to be performed by the merchants
of New York, who have the power to do it and only need resolve that they
will.
I congratulate you, gentlemen, on the continued attractions of the
annual entertainment you offer us; above all, I congratulate you on
having given us the great pleasure of meeting once more and seeing
seated together at your table the first four citizens of the metropolis
of the Empire State: Charles O'Conor, Peter Cooper, William Cullen
Bryant, and John A. Dix. I thank you for the courtesy of your
remembrance of the Press; and so to one and all, good-night. [Applause.]
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