An elective judiciary is slow to enforce the law against men before
whom its members come every few years in the character of suppliants
for favor; and how abjectly these learned candidates can sue, how
basely bid for a newspaper’s support, one must have been an editor to
know. The press has grown into a tyranny to which the courts themselves
are servile. To rule all classes and conditions of men with an iron
authority the newspapers have only to learn a single trick, against the
terrible power of which, when practised by others, they “continually do
cry,” with apparently never a thought of the advantage it might be to
themselves—the trick of combination. This lesson once learned, Liberty
may bury her own remains, for assuredly none will perform that pious
office for her with impunity. It has not come to that yet, but when
by virtue of controlling a newspaper a man is permitted to print and
circulate thousands of copies of a slander which neither he nor any man
would dare to speak before his victim’s friends a long step has been
taken toward the goal of entire irresponsibility. George Augustus Sala
said that from sea to sea America was woman’s kingdom, which she ruled
with absolute sway. Yet in America the father does not protect his
daughter, the son his mother, the brother his sister nor the husband
his wife, except in the theatrical profession, by way of advertisement.
The noblest and most virtuous lady in the land may be coarsely derided,
her reputation stabbed, her face, figure or toilet made the subject
of a scurrile jest, and no killing ensue, provided the offense be
committed with such circumstances of dissemination and publicity as
types alone can give it.