I
The influence of some newspapers on republican government is
discernibly good; that of the enormous majority conspicuously
bad. Conducted by rogues and dunces for dunces and rogues, these
are faithful to nothing but the follies and vices of our system,
strenuously opposing every intelligent attempt at their elimination.
They fetter the feet of wisdom and stiffen the prejudices of the
ignorant. They are sycophants to the mob, tyrants to the individual.
They constitute a menace to organized society—a peril to government of
any kind; and if ever in America Anarchy shall beg to introduce his
dear friend Despotism we shall have to thank our vaunted “freedom of
the press” as the controlling spirit of the turbulent time, and Lord
of Misrule. We may then be grateful too that, like a meteor consumed
by friction of the denser atmosphere which its speed compressed, its
brightest blaze will be its last. The despot whose path to power it
illumined will extinguish it with a dash of ink.