ART. I.--_Henry J. Raymond and the New York Press, for Thirty Years._
Progress of American Journalism, from 1840 to 1870. By AUGUSTUS
MAVERICK. Hartford, Connecticut: A. S. Hale. 1870.
There is no country in the world which so finely illustrates the
diffusive spirit of modern civilization as America; for, though in other
lands human nature seems to rise to a greater height in individual
instances, and to stand out in more picturesque relief, it is the nation
which has excelled them all in equalizing the rights, the enjoyments,
and the intelligence of man. Many circumstances have contributed to this
happy result. America has been clogged by none of the mischievous
remains of feudal institutions, and but little affected by those
violations of political economy, older than the age of reason, which
have checked the free and natural development of European communities.
Its provisions for popular education were from the first singularly
wise, liberal, and ample; there was no legislation to restrict all civil
and social advantages to the members of a single religious sect; and no
taxes on knowledge or artificial monopolies of any kind, to prevent the
people from having access to that full variety of opinions, inquiries,
and statements of fact, which is necessary to intellectual advancement.
Above all, it was born old, with all the elements of European
civilization to start with, and equipped with a complete literature, in
which it would seem almost impossible to find place for any great
genius, and with the best English works placed within every man's reach,
at less than a tenth of their original cost. Taking these things in
connection with the boundless material resources of the country, it is
not by any means difficult to explain the magical rapidity of its
advances in wealth and population, the signal prosperity it has already
enjoyed, and the extraordinary power and greatness to which it is
evidently destined.
The development of the press, like the improvement of the means of
civilization, is a certain sign of the relative advancement of a nation.
We use the term civilization here to signify not so much the development
of some elevated and delicate parts of human nature, such as art,
philosophy, or politeness, as that of political liberty and social
progress; and in this sense the progress of the press becomes
historically the most constant and faithful indication of the general
progress of a nation. The truth of this proposition becomes evident,
from the close connection that exists between the press and the public,
from the action and reaction, the efflux and reflux, from the true
corporate unity which brings into the press the life-blood of the
country. We depend upon the newspaper for distributing knowledge, as
well as creating it; it is an instrument by which the opinions and
feelings of the people may be guided and developed, as well as
communicated and ascertained. It is in fact an essential element in the
peculiar spirit and tendency which characterizes our modern
civilization. Still we are far from holding that it is a perfect
instrument, or free from very serious drawbacks. Eminent men like
Lamartine speak of it in terms of extravagant eulogy, predicting that
before the century shall have run out journalism will be the whole
press, the whole human thought, and that the only book possible from day
to day will be the newspaper; a great English novelist speaks of it as a
link in the great chain of miracles which prove our national greatness;
and Bulwer Lytton calls it the chronicle of civilization, the great
mental camera which throws a picture of the whole world upon a single
sheet of paper. These somewhat rhetorical representations are very
common, but they are far from exact or truthful. We suspect that the
newspaper tends in all countries to ignore, more or less, all knowledge
that will not render its teaching popular; that its chief figures are
often the wicked, the worthless, and the shallow; and that its pictures,
though generally faithful, are often false, distorted, and narrow. De
Tocqueville liked the liberty of the press, rather from the evils it
prevented, than from the advantages it created; and Montalembert
represents Liberty as saying to the Press, like the unhappy swain--'_Nec
cum te nec sine te vivere possum_.' John Stuart Mill has two objects of
hatred; Puritanism, with its positive creed and aggressive zeal, and the
ascendancy of the middle classes, through the newspaper press, with all
their mediocrity and bigotry. He has always protested, in the interests
of his great idol, individuality, against 'the _régime_ of public
opinion,' against the various 'usurpations upon the liberty of private
life,' against the moral intolerance of society, carried on through, the
newspapers. Amidst these various estimates of the press we are disposed
to take a middle course. It may sometimes be wielded by unworthy hands,
for unworthy purposes; its liberty may run into licence, and the rules
of good taste and propriety be violated; its policy on public questions
may be unscrupulous and unprincipled; but we remember that modern
progress would have been impossible without it; that the people are not
its slaves, but its patrons and critics; and we would lay no other
restraint upon it than the invisible fetters imposed by the intelligence
and good feeling of its readers. Whether, then, we consider the amount
and quality of intellectual force put forth in it, the character of mind
acted on by it, and the wide area over which it operates, especially in
England and America, where it has the greatest expansion, we cannot but
regard it as a subject for sincere congratulation that its influence has
been exercised so uniformly on the side of public safety and public
morals, that there has been a gradual improvement of late years in the
moral tone of newspaper management, and that it has succeeded in
creating and fostering a healthy and independent public opinion on all
the questions of the age.
The great development of the American press has taken place during the
last thirty years, keeping pace exactly with the advancing prosperity of
the country. A large number of new and powerful processes, as well as
influences of a more general kind, were converging towards this result.
The education of the people, the progress of legislation, the
discoveries of science, the inventions of art, conspired to make
literature, especially in the newspaper form, a prime necessity of
American life, and to place it within every man's reach on easy terms;
while every improvement made in the art of communication and travel
still farther contributed to its growth, and increased its utility. So
it has come to pass that America is the 'classic soil of newspapers;'
everybody is reading; every class is writing; literature is permeating
everywhere; publicity is sought for every interest and every order; no
political party, no religious sect, no theological school, no literary
or benevolent association, is without its particular organ; there is a
universality of print; the soldiers fighting in Mexico or in the
Southern states are printing the journal of their exploits on the
battle-field; the press is seizing on the whole public life and upon so
much of private life as through social irregularity, or individual force
of character, or national taste, necessarily emerges into publicity;
fostering on the one hand the worship of the almighty dollar, but
establishing a strong and wholesome counterpoise, by stimulating that
zeal for public education, that enthusiastic spirit of philanthropy, and
that truly munificent liberality by which the American people have been
always distinguished. As we have already intimated, the modern
development of the press is just thirty years old. There was no
telegraph before 1843; no fast ocean-steamer to carry news from the old
world for some years later; and no Associated Press to organize the
supply of intelligence. The first American newspaper was printed at
Boston, in 1690, fifty years after the appearance of the first English
newspaper; in 1775 there were only 34 newspapers; in 1800, 200; in 1830,
1,000; and the latest statistics give no less than 5,244 as the total
number of journals published in the United States, of which 542 are
daily, 4,425 are weekly, and 127 are monthly.
Our common idea of the American newspaper is that of a print published
by a literary Barnum, whose type, paper, talents, morality, and taste
are all equally wretched and inferior; who is certain to give us
flippancy for wit, personality for principle, bombast for eloquence,
malignity without satire, and news without truth or reliability; whose
paper is prolific of all kinds of sensational headings; and who is
obliged, in the service of his advertising customers, to become
enthusiastic on the subject of hams, exuberant in the praises of
hardware, and highly imaginative in the matter of dry-goods. Perhaps
this representation might apply, with some degree of correctness, to a
portion of the newspaper press, especially that published in the country
towns and villages; but we shall immediately see that American literary
enterprise, especially in the great cities, is not to be judged by such
unworthy examples. The work of Mr. Maverick, which appears at the head
of this article, supplies a large amount of information concerning
American journalism, connecting its more recent development with the
name of Henry J. Raymond, a well-known Republican politician, who
founded the _New York Times_, one of the most respectable and powerful
newspapers in the States. We cannot say much for the book, on literary
grounds: it exhibits nearly all the worst qualities of Transatlantic
journalism itself--flimsiness, personality, and haste; but its
information is very interesting and acceptable to European readers. The
facts of Raymond's life may be supplied in a few sentences. He was born
in 1820, at Lima, in the state of New York; he graduated at the
University of Vermont; he went to New York city in 1840, and was
introduced to newspaper life by Horace Greeley; he passed ten laborious
years on the _Tribune_, and the _Courier_ and _Inquirer_; and in the
year 1851 he may be justly said to have opened a new era in American
journalism, by establishing the _Times_, a daily paper, which carried
temperance and dignity into political discussion, banishing all
personalities, and maintaining a high critical and moral tone, which was
all but unknown before that period. Like most American journalists, he
engaged actively in politics, becoming in 1849 a member of the New York
Legislature, and afterwards speaker of the House of Representatives, and
Lieutenant-Governor of the State; and in 1864, member of Congress. He
was a sincere and upright politician, who always staunchly opposed the
slave party in the United States, but lost popularity and credit, by his
exceedingly foolish and unfortunate championship of President Johnson,
through all his remarkable freaks of obstinacy and eccentricity. On
returning home from his office, on the night of the 18th June, 1869, he
dropped down in the hall of his house, in a fit of apoplexy, and died
five hours afterwards, without recovering consciousness. He was in his
fiftieth year. Henry Ward Beecher said, in the funeral oration at his
grave, that Raymond 'was a man without hate, and, he might almost say,
without animosity; his whole career had been free from bitterness;' and
Horace Greeley bore this high testimony to his professional ability;--'I
doubt whether this country has known a journalist superior to Henry J.
Raymond. He was unquestionably a very clever and versatile, but not
powerful writer; and excelled especially in newspaper management.' We
shall have occasion to refer again to his services as a journalist.
In proposing to give some account of the American press, both secular
and religious, we have to remark that the first great stimulus given to
newspaper enterprise in America was by James Gordon Bennett, the
well-known editor of the _New York Herald_, which was established in the
year 1834. This able journalist was born in 1800, at Newmill, Keith,
Banffshire, of Roman Catholic parents. He was originally designed for
the priesthood, and had passed through a portion of his preliminary
training in the Roman Catholic College of Blairs, near Aberdeen, but
ultimately abandoned the prospects of a clerical life, and emigrated to
America, in his nineteenth year--as he said himself--'to see the country
where Franklin was born.' There he formed an early connection with the
press, but it was not, as we have said, till 1834 that he founded the
_Herald_. We are all more or less familiar with the moral and
intellectual characteristics of this newspaper--unsparing personality,
intolerable egotism, and sleepless hatred of England; but we are not so
foolish as to imagine that the _Herald_ became popular and successful
because Americans are fond of personal abuse, or private scandal, or of
the ceaseless denunciation of this country. These offences against good
taste and right feeling existed long before the publication of the
_Herald_. The secret of its remarkable success lay in the vigour and
tact with which Bennett laboured day and night to furnish ample and
early intelligence of events in all parts of the world, without regard
to cost and labour. Mr. Maverick tells us that 'all the old and
heavy-weighted journals, which lazily got themselves before the New York
public, day by day, thirty years ago, were undeniably sleepy,' and that
'the ruthless Bennett shocked the staid propriety of his time by
introducing the rivalries and the spirit of enterprise which have ever
since been distinguishing characteristics of New York newspaper life.'
The _Herald_ was successful, then, because Bennett made it his business
to present his readers with fresh, ample, and correct news. No editorial
eloquence, no skilful flattery of national prejudice or party feeling,
could have atoned for any shortcoming in this respect. The other
newspaper managers were soon compelled to imitate his energy and skill
in the supply of news, and Mr. Maverick has informed us how effectively
his example was sometimes followed, by his rivals. On one occasion,
before the days of the telegraph, the leading New York journals
despatched reporters to Boston, to obtain an early account of a speech
by Daniel Webster, who was then in the plenitude of his fame. Two
reporters represented each journal; but Raymond alone represented the
_Tribune_. On their return home by the steamer the other reporters
passed the night in convivial pleasantries; but Raymond was busily
engaged all the time, in a retired part of the vessel, writing off his
report for a batch of printers who were on board with their 'cases' of
type; so that the entire report, making several columns of the
_Tribune_, was prepared for being printed on the arrival of the steamer
at New York, at five o'clock in the morning. The feat was a remarkable
instance of newspaper enterprise. The Hudson River steamboats afterwards
regularly carried corps of printers with types, from Albany to New York,
to prepare the speeches of legislators for next morning's journals.
Carrier-pigeons were employed to convey the latest European news from
Halifax or Boston to Wall-street; and pilot-boats made long voyages, in
stormy weather, to meet Atlantic steamers in search of early news. In
election times pony-expresses were appointed by rival journals to carry
early intelligence of results; as, in railway times, 'locomotive engines
were raced on rival lines of railroad in the interest of papers which
had paid high prices for the right of way.' Sometimes a little of that
'smartness,' which is so popular in America, was displayed in these
newspaper rivalries, as when, on one occasion, the _Tribune_ reporter
ran off to New York on a special engine, hired expressly for the
_Herald_, and thus succeeded in publishing an early and exclusive
edition of some important news.
The success of the _Herald_ led Horace Greeley to found the _Tribune_,
in 1841. We can see at once that, like Bennett and Raymond, he was
greatly endowed with that species of sagacity which divines at a glance
the capabilities of a new project or speculation. Greeley was the son of
a New England farmer, and came to New York a poor penniless boy. His
earlier essays in newspaper management were total failures; but the
_Tribune_ was remarkably successful from its very commencement. It
eschewed the coarse and violent style of the _Herald_, and pursued a far
more generous and enlightened policy on public questions, while it
almost rivalled the business-like energy of its earlier contemporary;
but it ultimately injured itself by its championship of socialism, and
a host of other secular heresies. For, though Greeley was of a
remarkably practical turn of mind, at least in the management of his own
business, he was a great theorist, committed to every _recherché_
novelty in faith and life, a moral philosopher, after a fashion of his
own, sincere and liberal in his ideas, with deep sympathies for the
working classes, advocating their rights, and seeking their elevation,
while he did not fear to expose their follies and their faults. The
_Tribune_ became, under his management, the organ of socialism and
spirit-rapping, woman's rights, vegetarianism, temperance, and peace
principles. It seemed, in fact, the premature harbinger of the 'good
time coming,' adept in all the cant of reform, and familiar with the
whole philosophy of progress, a very clear vein of sense being
perceptible to critical minds, in the elegant sophistry with which it
vindicated its own course, and tried to overwhelm all objectors. It
attempted, in fact, to turn to account the remarkable tremour of the
public mind, which arose from what was seen or said between 1845 and
1855 of mesmerism, electro-biology, spirit-rapping, Swedenborgianism,
and psychology; but we are glad to know that the _Tribune_ has greatly
improved in its general views, and comes more into accord with common
ideas on these curious subjects.
It was the disgust and disappointment of the public with the socialistic
heresies of the _Tribune_, as well as with the shameless and indecent
personalities of the _Herald_, that led to the establishment of the
_Times_, in the year 1851. It took rank at once as a dignified and able
journal. Its influence was exercised from the first on the side of
morality, industry, education, and religion; and to use the words of an
eminent English journalist, now at the American press, 'it encouraged
truthfulness, carried decency, temperance, and courtesy into discussion,
and helped to abate the greatest nuisance of the age, the coarseness,
violence, and calumny, which does so much to drive sensible and
high-minded and competent men out of public life, or keep them from
entering it.' No one, certainly, has ever done more than Henry J.
Raymond for the elevation of the American newspaper. We cannot justly
overlook the substantial services done in the same department by the
_New York Evening Post_, under the management of its veteran editor,
William Cullen Bryant, the poet; by the _New York World_, a new paper
distinguished by the talent, incisiveness, and dignity of its articles;
and by the _Nation_, managed by Mr. Godkin, an Irishman, once connected
with the London press, and which stands upon the intellectual level of
the best European periodicals.
We are indebted to Mr. Maverick for a tolerably full account of the
present position of New York journalism. There are 150 newspapers
published in that city, of which 24 are daily papers, two of them
published in the French language, and three in the German. The remainder
are weekly journals, of which eighteen are in German, one in Italian,
and two in Spanish. There are no less than 258 German newspapers in all
America, the largest number being published in Pennsylvania. There are
eighteen religious newspapers published in New York. We have the
following information in reference to the literary and mechanical
arrangements of the daily press:
'Each of the great daily papers of New York to-day employs
more than a hundred men, in different departments, and
expends half a million of dollars annually, with less
concern to the proprietors than an outlay of one-quarter of
that sum would have occasioned in 1840. The editorial corps
of the papers issued in New York on the first day of the
present year numbered at least half a score of persons; the
reporters were in equal force; sixty printers and eight or
ten pressmen were employed to put in type and to print the
contents of each issue of the paper; twenty carriers
conveyed the printed sheets to its readers, and a dozen
mailing clerks and bookkeepers managed the business details
of each establishment. Editorial salaries now range from
twenty-five to sixty dollars a week; reporters receive from
twenty to thirty dollars a week; and the gross receipts of
a great daily paper for a year often reach the sum of one
million of dollars, of which an average of one third is
clear profit. These statistics are applicable to four or
five of the daily morning journals of New York.'
There is much literary ability displayed in the daily and weekly
journals of Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, and other leading cities.
The _Boston Post_ is a leading paper in that city. It is answerable for
all the paradoxical absurdities of the famous Mrs. Partington. The
_Washington National Era_, like the _National Intelligencer_, of the
same capital, has a high position, as a literary and political journal.
It was through its columns that Mrs. Stowe first gave to the world her
'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' just as Judge Haliburton first published 'Sam
Slick, the Clockmaker,' in the pages of a Nova Scotian weekly newspaper.
It is a remarkable fact that the Americans have never produced a
Quarterly worthy of the name, except the 'North American Review,' which
is certainly below the intellectual level of the four or five English
reviews which are reprinted in New York every quarter within a
fortnight of their publication in England. It was said, in explanation
of the fact that the French had never succeeded in maintaining a review
on the plan of the English Quarterlies, that their opinions and parties
change so often, and the nation was so volatile, that they could not
wait a quarter of a year upon anybody. But this explanation will not
apply to the Americans. The 'North American Review' has always had on
its list of contributors the very best names in native literature, such
as Longfellow, Everett, J. R. Lowell, Motley, Jared Sparks, Caleb
Cushing, George Bancroft, and others. Yet its success has been very
partial. Its literary position ought to have been far more decided. The
'Atlantic Monthly' holds a deservedly high place in American letters,
with such authors as Emerson, Holmes, and Mrs. Stowe among its principal
contributors; but its influence has always been thrown into the scale
against Evangelical Christianity. 'Harper's Magazine,' published in New
York, is an illustrated monthly for the fashionable world, with a
circulation of 150,000 copies. 'Bonner's Ledger' has pushed its way into
the front rank of weekly magazines, by its romances, its essays, and its
poetry, from such writers as Parton, Beecher, Everett, Saxe, Bryant, and
many others. The sporting world has its _Wilkes' Spirit of the Times_;
the advocates of woman's rights have the _Revolution_, in the hands of
Susan B. Anthony and E. C. Stanton; the grocers have a _Grocers'
Journal_; the merchants a _Dry Goods Reporter_; the billiard-players, a
_Billiard-cue_; and the dealers in tobacco, a _Tobacco Leaf_. The
advocates of Spiritualism and Socialism have a large number of journals
in their service. But, strange to relate, the Americans have not a
single comic periodical like our 'Punch.' Mr. Maverick says that, in the
course of a dozen years, many attempts have been made to establish such
a print, but without success. 'Vanity Fair' was the best of the class,
but its wit and its pictorial illustrations were equally poor and
trivial. All the comic papers that flourished for a few years were only
remarkable for the immense amount of bad wit they contained, for a
wilderness of worthlessness, for an endless process of tickling and
laughter; with only an occasional gleam of genuine humour and
imagination. If the Americans have failed in producing such a
periodical, it is not from the want of literary men possessed of the
_vis comica_, for Oliver Wendell Holmes, James R. Lowell, Shelton,
Butler, and Saxe are first-rate humourists. The English comic papers can
command all the abounding talent of men like Douglas Jerrold, Albert
Smith, W. M. Thackeray, Mark Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Thomas Hood, F.
Burnand, and a host of other satirists. The Americans, however, have
never had a Tenniel, a Doyle, a Leech, a Du Maurier, or a Keene, to
throw off, week after week, the most amusing and instructive of
pictorial satires. All they have hitherto done in this department is to
copy with tolerable taste and skill the best cartoons and wood-cuts of
'Punch' and our illustrated magazines. Perhaps America has yet to find
its Bradbury and Evans. It is evidently most in want of a publisher.
After all, there is hardly anything the Americans need more than a good
comic paper, to moderate the intensity of their politics, to laugh down
the extravagant follies of American society, to measure the strength of
their public men, to register their blunders, and expose their
hollowness, to watch over the caprices of fashion, to criticize the
press itself, with its coarseness and scurrility, its disgraceful
advertisements, and its downright fabrications; taking good care to keep
free from those sins which so easily beset satirists, rancour,
obscenity, and attacks on private character. They need a satirical
journal, just to apply to all things the good old test of common sense;
and when uncommon wit is allied with common sense in branding any custom
or habit as evil, it must be very deeply rooted if it cannot be
overturned or modified. Besides, the Americans, as a hard-working race,
need a refreshing humour to relieve the strain upon their mental and
physical energies. Emerson remarked of Abraham Lincoln, that humour
refreshed him like sleep or wine; and a nation so eager in all kinds of
work deserves the innocent relaxation that comes from literature in its
most sparkling and pleasing form.
The volume of Mr. Maverick makes almost no allusion to an important
department of the American press, which demands some notice at our
hands, viz., that which ministers to the intellectual and moral wants of
the Irish Roman Catholic immigrants. There is no city of any magnitude
which does not possess its Catholic organ. New York city is the proper
centre of the Catholic press, but Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati,
Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Boston, Charleston, and St.
Louis have each their weekly paper for the Irish population.
Intellectually, these papers are very inferior, and so illiberal that
almost every question is viewed from the single standpoint of creed,
race, or country. The liberal policy of a free and progressive state has
hardly produced the slightest effect upon them. It is a very remarkable
fact that in America, as in other countries, journalism is not wielded
in the service of Romanism with any freshness and power, except by
converts from Protestantism. We find _Brownson's Review_, the _Freeman's
Journal_, the _Shepherd of the Valley_ (now discontinued), and the
_Catholic Herald_, in the hands of perverts, just as in Europe the
_Tablet_ was founded by a convert from Quakerism, the _Dublin Review_ is
in the hands of an Oxford pervert, and the _Historisch-politische
Blätter_ of Munich was founded by Professor Phillips, and maintained in
great scientific efficiency by Yarke, both converts from Lutheranism.
The Irish press in America is very ultramontane. It seems drunk with the
very spirit of religious servility, mad with the hatred of liberty, and
adopts the strictest Roman Catholic doctrines, following them out to
their extremest consequences, with a rudeness and arrogance of style,
approaching to vulgarity. Orestes Brownson says that the Pope is nowhere
so truly Pope, and finds nowhere, so far as Catholics are concerned, so
little resistance in the full exercise of his authority as in the United
States. No European editor, except Veuillot, ever wrote in the style of
Brownson himself, who is intellectually without a peer among Romish
editors; for he takes the strongest and most unpopular ground as the
very foundation of his ecclesiastical and political theories. Veuillot
shocked the good sense and liberal feeling of Europe, by defending the
Inquisition and the St. Bartholomew massacre; but Brownson despises all
prudential considerations, in claiming for his church the right to put
heretics to death, for he holds that this is punishment, and not
persecution. The _Shepherd of the Valley_ held that the question of
punishing heretics was one of mere expediency, and declared that in the
event of his church gaining the ascendancy in America, there would be an
end of religious toleration. The _Pittsburgh Catholic_ censured these
outspoken utterances; but the _Boston Pilot_ rebuked its Pittsburgh
contemporary for its censures, declaring that the _Shepherd of the
Valley_ said nothing that was not true; yet saying itself, with marked
inconsistency, 'No Catholic wishes to abridge the religious rights of
Protestants.' It is in perfect consistency with such ultramontane ideas
that these Irish newspapers uniformly take the side of royal despots in
great national struggles, and deny all sympathy to revolutionary leaders
except those of Ireland. Though they usually cry out lustily when any
step in American legislation or any popular combination manifests even
an appearance of hostility to Catholic interests, they actually had the
audacity, in 1859, to defend those royal miscreants of Italy, who rioted
in the misery of their subjects, and of whom it was truly said, 'They
kept one-half of their people in prison and the other half in fear of
it.' They sympathised with the Poles in their last insurrection, because
their oppressor was a schismatic; they had no sympathy with Hungarians,
or Italians, or Spaniards, because their oppressors were Catholics. The
_Boston Pilot_--the most popular journal of the Irish--forgot its _rôle_
so far in 1848, as to take a liberal view of the European revolutions.
The result was that the _Univers_, in giving an account of Catholic
journalism in America, excluded the _Pilot_ from its list of the
orthodox; the clergy, moreover, condemned it; and it was obliged to
express its penitence for such an error of judgment. The _Pilot_, after
all, is more reasonable and less fanatical than most of the Catholic
papers, and is specially copious in its reports of Catholic news. All
these Irish newspapers are, without exception, bitterly anti-English in
their tone and spirit. One might suppose that having escaped from misery
and poverty, and launched upon a new career of prosperity and
contentment, the Irish could afford to forget England; but, like their
teachers at the press, they are strong in historical grudges, and their
hatred to this country is as much theological as political. The
Irish-American journalist delights in copying into his paper the abuse
of England, collected from all quarters of the world, and in times of
war or rebellion depreciates our triumphs and magnifies our misfortunes.
The Catholic clergy have found it hard to control the opinions of a
portion of their Irish countrymen, who, though sufficiently submissive
in spiritual concerns, have shown a disposition to assert an
independence of clerical control in matters affecting the interests of
Ireland. Sometimes, indeed, the clergy have been led to humour this
national feeling, as when they were in the habit of attending the 'Tom
Moore Club,' at Boston, though it had been more than suspected that the
favourite poet had died out of the pale of the church. At length the
_Shepherd of the Valley_ pointedly condemned their appearance at the
annual banquet, on the ground that the poet was ashamed of his country's
religion during life, and that English preachers performed the obsequies
at his grave. The appearance of Thomas Francis Meagher in America, after
his escape from penal servitude in Australia, greatly perplexed the
bishops and clergy; but the _mot d'ordre_ went forth, and all the
Catholic newspapers in America, with a single exception, assailed him
with the greatest bitterness, for his enlightened opinions upon
religious liberty, and upon the relation between Church and State.
Thousands of the Irish, notwithstanding, rallied round Meagher; and the
_Irish-American_ was established, for the vindication and enforcement of
his principles. There are a few other organs of Irish nationality,
including the _Irish People_, of John Mitchell, published in America,
but, with the exception of the _People_, they are all contemptible, in
every point of view. You find in their pages column after column of
windy jargon and tawdry rhetoric, which would consign an English editor
to a madhouse. This gaudy and ornate style, with a profusion of florid
imagery and Oriental hyperbole quite overpowering, seems to characterise
every Nationalist journal. It is these papers that have inflated the
Fenian bubble. We pity the deplorable ignorance of the Irish masses,
their misguided enthusiasm, and their preposterous pertinacity in the
pursuit of visionary ends; but we have no language too severe to apply
to their intellectual leaders who pursue their ignoble calling from a
mercenary calculation of the profits to be derived from bottomless
credulity. We fear that the Irish press generally has succeeded in
imparting an education to the _emigrés_ that can serve only to nurture
hatreds, which, like curses, too often come home to roost, and that some
considerable time may be expected to elapse before all the appliances of
American civilization and Christianity shall succeed, as they most
certainly will, in the assimilation of such intractable materials.
Our notice of the American press would be incomplete without some
account of that ample supply of religious literature which is furnished
by thousands of weekly, monthly, and quarterly periodicals. The
religious newspaper is almost peculiar to America, and is far superior
to any similar publication in England. The English paper is more
ecclesiastical and less religious; the American, while equally strenuous
and careful in the advocacy of denominational claims, supplies much of
what we usually obtain here from the _Sunday Magazine_ and the _Family
Treasury_. The literary superiority of the religious press over the
secular in America arises mainly from the fact that its conductors and
contributors are mostly clergymen who have been graduates of colleges,
and are possessed of a considerable amount of classical culture and
training. Every denomination has a large number of weekly organs. The
two leading newspapers of the class are the _New York Independent_ and
the _New York Observer_, the former an organ of the Congregationalists,
and the latter of the Presbyterians. The _Independent_ was originally
conducted by the Rev. Dr. Bacon, the Rev. Dr. Thompson, and the Rev.
Richard Storrs, jun.; it afterwards passed into the hands of the Rev.
Henry Ward Beecher, who wielded it with great power and efficiency in
the anti-slavery cause; and it is now managed by Theodore Tilton in
company with several others. It contains a great variety of religious,
political, and general news, devotional and literary pieces of great
merit, together with foreign and domestic correspondence, written with
an excellent spirit. Mr. Beecher has established, and conducts, the
_Christian Union_, another religious paper, which is rapidly rising to
popularity and power. _The Advance_, a religious paper published in
Chicago, and conducted by Dr. Patten, is one of the best of the
religious papers of America. The _Observer_ is one of the oldest and
best established papers, once exceedingly Conservative in its views of
slavery, but always distinguished by sound judgment, good taste, and
fair culture. The Methodists are well represented by the _Christian
Advocate and Journal_, and the Baptists by the _Examiner and Chronicle_.
The monthly organ of the American Tract Society has a circulation of
about 200,000, which it owes to its catholic character and its
extraordinary cheapness. The quarterly literature of the American
churches is of a very high character. The _Bibliotheca Sacra_ is the
great organ of New England theology, and the _Biblical Repertory and
Princeton Review_ is the leading representative of the Calvinism of the
Westminster standards. These are the two most powerful reviews. The
_Bibliotheca Sacra_ is published at Andover, the scene of the learned
labours of Moses Stuart, the biblical expositor, and was established
twenty-seven years ago. It differs from the _Princeton Review_ and all
British reviews in publishing the names of its contributors, and it has
succeeded in gathering to its pages a vast amount of the most versatile
talent from nearly all the Congregational Colleges of America. Its most
original contributor in the domain of metaphysical theology is Professor
Austin Phelps, of Andover, whose articles on 'The Instrumentality of the
Truth in Regeneration,' and 'Human Responsibility as related to Divine
Agency in Conversion,' published within the last two or three years,
prove that much of the genius and spirit of Jonathan Edwards still
exists in New England theology. Another eminent contributor, Professor
Park, of Andover, who is also its principal editor, has been frequently
in collision with Dr. Hodge, of the _Princeton Review_, on points of
Calvinistic divinity. Professor Bascom has been recently publishing in
its pages a series of articles on 'The Natural Theology of Social
Science'--a subject hitherto left too much in the hands of
secularists--and has succeeded in lifting it with advantage into the
higher sphere of theology. The articles of this review are generally
marked by a high style of ability and a scientific thoroughness: and
are, many of them, worthy of being reproduced, as they have been, from
time to time, in the _British and Foreign Evangelical Review_. The
spirit of its management is exceedingly liberal. We observe, for
example, that it recently published an article on 'Christian Baptism,'
from the professor of a Baptist College, in conformity with a plan
adopted by the conductors of securing from representative men of
different sects and schools of thought, articles unfolding distinctive,
theological opinions, and exhibiting with something like scientific
precision the exact peculiarities of meaning attached to the terminology
of the respective schools. The _Princeton Review_ is the oldest
quarterly in the United States. It was established in 1825 by Dr.
Charles Hodge, the well-known commentator on the Epistle to the Romans,
who was then, and still is, a Professor in the Princeton Theological
Seminary; but it was not till 1829 that it ceased to be a mere repertory
of selections from foreign works in the department of biblical
literature. It is, beyond all question, the greatest purely theological
review that has ever been published in the English tongue, and has waged
war in defence of the Westminster standards for a period of forty years,
with a polemic vigour and unity of design without any parallel in the
history of religious journalism. If we were called to name any living
writer who, to Calvin's exegetical tact, unites a large measure of
Calvin's grasp of mind and transparent clearness in the department of
systematic theology, we should point to this Princeton Professor. He
possesses, to use the words of an English critic, the power of seizing
and retaining with a rare vigour and tenacity, the great doctrinal
turning-points in a controversy, while he is able to expose with
triumphant dexterity the various subterfuges under which it has been
sought to elude them. His articles furnish a remarkably full and exact
repository of historic and polemic theology; especially those on
'Theories of the Church,' 'The Idea of the Church,' 'The Visibility of
the Church,' 'The Perpetuity of the Church,' all of which have been
reproduced in English reviews. The great characteristic of his mind is
the polemic element; accordingly we find him in collision with Moses
Stuart, of Andover, in 1833, and with Albert Barnes in 1835, on the
doctrine of Imputation; with Professor Park, in 1851, on 'The Theology
of the Intellect and the Theology of the Feelings;' with Dr. Niven, of
the _Mercersburg Review_, in 1848, on the subject of the 'Mystical
Presence,' the title of an article which attempted to apply the modern
German philosophy to the explanation and subversion of Christian
doctrines; with Professor Schaff, in 1854, on the doctrine of historical
development; and with Horace Bushnell, in 1866, on vicarious sacrifice.
In fact, a theological duel has been going on between Andover and
Princeton for nearly forty years, the leading controversialists of
Andover being Stuart, Park, Edward Beecher, Baird, and Fisher, and those
of Princeton, Hodge, the Alexanders, and Atwater.[1] Hodge has
contributed one hundred and thirty-five articles to the _Review_ since
its commencement; Dr. Archibald Alexander--a venerable divine, who
resembled John Brown, of Haddington, in many respects--contributed
seventy-seven; his son, Dr. James Waddel Alexander, twice a Princeton
Professor, and afterwards pastor of the wealthiest congregation in New
York, contributed one hundred and one articles; another son, Dr. Joseph
Addison Alexander, the well-known commentator on Isaiah, contributed
ninety-two, mostly on classical and Oriental subjects; and Dr. Atwater,
another Princeton professor of great learning and versatility,
contributed sixty-four on theological and metaphysical subjects. The
articles in the _Princeton_ on science, philosophy, literature, and
history, have generally displayed large culture and research. The review
of Cousin's Philosophy, in 1839, by Professor Dod, was one of the most
remarkable papers that appeared on the subject in America, and was
afterwards reprinted separately on both sides of the Atlantic. Another
theological quarterly of America, is the _New Englander_, published at
Newhaven, Connecticut, and representative principally of Yale
scholarship. Nearly all the leading names in New England theology, such
as Bellamy, Hopkins, Emmons, Dwight, Griffin, Tyler, and Taylor, among
the dead, and Bushnell, Beecher, and Bacon, among the living, are
associated with the venerable University of Yale. Tryon Edwards (the
great-grandson of Jonathan Edwards) is one of the contributors to the
_New Englander_. The professors and graduates of the college are its
principal contributors. Among them are to be found the distinguished
names of Dr. Noah Porter and President Woolsey. The former has recently
contributed to the _New Englander_, a series of valuable articles, just
reprinted in a small volume, on 'The American Colleges and the American
Public;' an able discussion of the fundamental principles of University
education. The _Mercersburg Review_ is the quarterly organ of the German
Reformed Church, and has been conducted, from its commencement, by Dr.
Niven and Professor Schaff, the well-known historian. The Baptists have
their _Christian Review_, the Methodists their _Methodist Quarterly
Review_, the Lutherans their _Evangelical Review_, the Episcopalians
their _Protestant Episcopal Quarterly Review_, and the Unitarians their
_Christian Examiner_, which reflects from time to time the vicissitudes
of Unitarian opinion. There is one fact suggested by this review of the
American religious press, viz., that Episcopacy holds a very inferior
place beside Independency and Presbyterianism in theological authorship.
We all know how greatly things are changed, even in England, since Dr.
Arnold deplored, and all but despised, the culture of Dissenters, for we
have Dean Alford, but the other day, confessing in the _Contemporary
Review_, 'Already the Nonconformists have passed us by in Biblical
scholarship, and ministerial training.' But in the United States, the
palm of theological scholarship has always rested in the hands of
Congregational and Presbyterian divines. The best theological
seminaries, the ablest theological reviews, and the most original as
well as extensive authorship in the various branches of theology, belong
to the two denominations referred to.
We shall now proceed, as briefly as possible, to make some observations
of a critical nature upon the intellectual and moral character of the
American press generally. It is not, certainly, in any spirit of
national superiority that we point to the undoubted fact that,
notwithstanding the great expansion of newspaper literature in the
States, the wide diffusion of popular education, and the circulation of
English books of the best kind at a mere nominal cost, the Americans
have as yet produced nothing representatively like our London _Times_,
or _Punch_, or the _Athenæum_, or the _Illustrated London News_, or the
_Saturday Review_, or the _Art Journal_, or the _Edinburgh_ and
_Quarterly_. They have not even produced a single great newspaper writer
like Captain Stirling, of the _Times_, Albany Fonblanque, sen., of the
_Examiner_, or Hugh Miller, of the _Edinburgh Witness_, for Bennett,
Greeley, and Raymond, though capital editors, are all greatly inferior
to these men in that art of scholarly, dignified, and tasteful
leader-writing, which gives such a power and charm to London journalism.
Newspaper writing is, perhaps, the most difficult of all writing; there
is none at least in which excellence is so rarely attained. The capacity
of bringing widely-scattered information into a focus, of drawing just
conclusions from well-selected facts, of amplifying, compressing,
illustrating a succession of topics, all on the spur of the moment,
without a moment's stay to examine or revise, argues great intellectual
cultivation. The articles may not be of a lofty order, or demand for
their execution the very highest kind of talent, but the power of
accomplishing it with success is very uncommon, and of all the varieties
of ways in which incompetency is manifested, an irrepressible tendency
to fine writing is associated with the greater number of them. De
Tocqueville says that democratic journalism has a strong tendency to be
virulent in spirit and bombastic in style. It certainly runs the risk of
lawlessness, inaccuracy, and irreverence, with much of vehemence, and
with little taste, imagination, or profundity. One serious charge we
have to bring against the American newspapers is, that they have sorely
vulgarized and vitiated the English language. We are aware that many of
them imagine the language of their country to be the standard as to
idiom, pronunciation, and spelling, and any English variation from their
golden rule as erroneous and heterodox; but such critics are entitled to
no consideration whatever. If men of education at the American press
refuse to study the style of the great authors who fixed and purified
the language of our common forefathers, so that we may have one and not
two languages spoken on opposite sides of the Atlantic, let them at
least imitate such writers of their own as Washington Irving, Horace
Bushnell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose pure and
native English is wholly free from all the corruptions and affectations
of phrase which overrun American newspapers, simply because it is
beautifully modelled upon the most elegant and polished writers of
English literature. In fact, the Americans have always been greatly in
need of a critical organ, like the old _Edinburgh Review_, to purify the
literary atmosphere from the clouds and mists of false taste which
deface it, to stand censor on books and newspapers, a recognized
authority in the literary republic, for whose quarterly judgments
readers might look with interest, and authors with trembling. The
_North American Review_, though written with great spirit, learning, and
ability, and abounding in profound and original discussions on the most
interesting subjects, has never filled the place of the _Edinburgh_,
and, indeed, its own style is not free from the common sin of
affectation. It is pleasant to think of William Cullen Bryant, the poet,
hanging up in the office of his newspaper--the _New York Evening
Post_--a catalogue of words that no editor or reporter is ever to be
allowed to use.[2] Let us hope that the literary men of America, of all
classes, will seriously aim at the formation of a purer, chaster, and
juster style of writing, for what they have hitherto produced has been
defective in taste rather than in talent.
Another great sin of American journalism is its intolerable personality,
violence, and exaggeration. This was the disgrace of our own English
press at no distant period. Cobbett was a great sinner in this respect,
He had much to do with raising the intellectual, and lowering the moral,
reputation of the modern newspaper. The wide diffusion of enlightened
views on politics and religion is attested, however, in a remarkable
manner among ourselves, by the moderation of tone which we now see in
journals which, about twenty years ago, were remarkable for their
scurrility and violence. It is no longer a recommendation to an English
newspaper to be known as an assailant of the Royal Family, the
aristocracy, the bench of bishops, or parsons. Several publications
that, a few years since, professed atheism and secularism, have become
extinct, and the _quondam_ organs of Chartism and fierce democracy have
been obliged to become respectable. But many of the American newspapers
are much worse than the English were a quarter of a century ago. With
us, faction has become less mischievous and shameless; unfounded
accusations less common and less malignant; invectives more measured and
decorous; not merely because the evil passions which required to be fed
with the abuse of individuals have calmed down, but because the British
press is now guided by the principle of attacking public opinion, not
private characters, measures, not men; and its quarrels are usually
governed by the laws of honour and chivalry, which proscribe all base
advantages. But an American newspaper cannot assail another newspaper
without mentioning the editor's name, and calling him coward or rascal.
If you cannot answer your opponent's objections, you caricature his
appearance, or dress, or diet, or accent, as Bennett is in the habit of
treating Greeley; and if you are foiled by his wit, you recover your
advantage by stabbing his character. No allusions become too indecorous
for your taste; no sarcasms too bitter for your savage spite; and no
character pure enough to be sacred from your charges and insinuations.
The American editor pursues his antagonist as if he were a criminal. The
_New York World_ lately devoted four columns of its space to illustrate
by quotations the amenities of American journalism. The majority of the
papers seem to subsist on the great staple of falsehood and personality,
and enjoy all the advantages which spring from an utter contempt for the
restraints of decency and candour; and we are strongly of opinion that
this work of cruel intimidation is pursued with unrelenting eagerness,
not from the influence of angry passions or furious prejudices, but in
the cold-blooded calculation of the profits which idle curiosity or the
vulgar appetite for slander may enable its authors to derive from it. We
are not prepared to endorse all the strong statements made by infuriated
rivals concerning the proprietor of the _New York Herald_; but he leaves
us, in no doubt, himself, as to the light in which he regarded his own
frequent chastisements. Immediately after James Watson Webb had severely
whipped him in the streets of New York, the whole affair was recounted,
in the _Herald_ with a sensational circumstantiality that had an evident
eye to business, though we cannot overlook the remarkable good humour
with which Bennett treated the whole affair:--
'The fellow,' he says, 'no doubt wanted to let out the
never-failing supply of good humour and wit which have
created such a reputation for the _Herald_, and appropriate
the contents to supply the emptiness of his own skull. He
didn't succeed, however, in rifling me of my ideas. My
ideas in a few days will flow as freshly as ever, and he
will find it to his cost.'
Imagine the London _Times_ degraded to the condition of its responsible
editor rejoicing in his own personal chastisement! American journalists
fight like their French brethren. They never dream of explanations.
Bullets and bowie-knives are the natural sequel of such recriminations
as disgrace their newspapers. This extreme violence is part of the loose
political morality so common there. Americans seem to be taught almost
from their infancy to hate one-half of the nation, and so contract all
the virulence and passion of party before they have come to the age of
reason; but before their newspapers can be said to enter upon the course
of real usefulness which is open to them, they must have come to believe
that political differences may exist without their opponents being
either rogues or fools. Jefferson said in his day that the scurrility of
the press drove away the best men from public life, and would certainly
have driven away Washington had he lived to suffer from its growing
excesses. James Fenimore Cooper, the celebrated novelist, had a horror
of newspapers, and instituted actions at law against a host of them for
literary libels. He once remarked, 'The press of this country tyrannizes
over public men of letters, the arts, the stage, and even private life.
Under the semblance of maintaining liberty, it is gradually establishing
a despotism as ruthless and grasping and one that is quite as vulgar as
that of any Christian state known.' This view of the case is certainly
serious and suggestive. Party violence may be carried to a length that
defeats itself, for it may harden public men against all newspaper
criticism whatever, to the great injury of public affairs, and thus
lower the estimation and disturb the course of public opinion. Nowhere
are fools more dogmatic than in politics, and nowhere are wise men more
doubtful and silent; but American party writers have no respect for the
Horatian maxim, 'in medio tutissimus'--the secret of that moderation of
opinion which has distinguished the most genial and sagacious men in our
political world. They must really learn to cultivate a love of truth and
justice; they should seek to attain the power of holding the scales
steadily, while the advantages or disadvantages of every question are
fairly weighed; they should stamp upon their professional life the
impress of personal rectitude and honour, and not wait--to copy the tone
of the old apologies--till a higher standard of public morals, and a
more intelligent cultivation of political and literary inquiries, shall
have raised for them a new class of readers. It is the prerogative of
genius to create the light by which it is to be understood and
appreciated; but the working talents of a country, which are identified
with its immediate interests, ought at least to rise a little above the
surrounding level.
We are led, from this point, to notice another defect in American
journalism,--the absence of the anonymous usage, which is, indeed,
mainly answerable for the scurrility and violence already referred to.
The British editor is usually unknown to the public; the French
journalist subscribes his name at the foot of his articles; but the
American editor publishes his name and address boldly at the top of his
newspaper. The effect of this custom is to identify the authority of the
journal with the personal influence of the editor; it tends to a habit
of deciding questions on personal grounds, and to a far too marked
superfluity of the _tu quoque_ argument. The object of the American
journalist is not so much the instruction of the public as the political
advancement of himself, for journalism usually forms the first stage in
the course of an ambitious politician, or a rising statesman; and the
American usage is certainly very well adapted to this end. Our anonymous
habit limits the discussions of the press and abolishes egotism, while
it certainly tends to debar personalities. It has been remarked, as a
suggestive fact, that personality is the common vice of the only free
press in the world, which ignores the anonymous principle; and that in
England, under a contrary usage, personality is little known, always
reprobated, and, indeed, in cases of flagrant personal attacks, the
authorship is usually but thinly disguised. It is absurd to defend the
American habits as manly and ours as cowardly; for their habit tends to
make writers far from circumspect or considerate of the feelings of
others. But, in fact, the publicity in which American journalists
delight is only akin to the publicity of American life generally. The
British public would not tolerate the intrusion of the press into
private or family concerns; yet one New York paper published, in the
panic, of 1857, the name of every gentleman who bought a silk dress for
his wife, or gave a dinner-party to his friends. Other newspapers
criticize the dress and appearance of ladies at balls and cricket
parties, the personality of their praise being almost as offensive as at
other times the coarseness of their vituperation.
We confess that we do not entertain a very high opinion of the morality
of the American press, though we admit there has been a sensible
improvement within the last thirty years. Emerson made the remark, in
his 'English Traits,' that the London _Times_ was an 'immoral
institution,' on the ground we presume, of its frequent changes of
opinion. We are far from defending the leading journal in its policy of
tergiversation--for there can be no doubt it ever fights on the stronger
side, upholds no falling cause, and advocates no great principle--but it
was never yet bought with bribes or cowed by intimidation. It has
sometimes shown that it is conducted on principles superior to mere
money considerations, for, during the Railway mania of 1845, when its
advertising sheet was overrun with projected lines of railway, realizing
to the proprietors the enormous sum of from £2,839 to £6,687 per week,
the Thunderer turned its fire on these projects, and lost nearly £3,000
in a single week. We do not charge the American press with any flagrant
changes of policy or principle, for we believe it is, in these respects,
sufficiently consistent. But we deplore the absence of high moral
purpose, as well as independence in its discussions of public questions.
The American people demand a large amount of flattery; they have come
almost to loathe the wholesome truth; they must be pampered with
constant adulations, so that no one will venture to tell them their
faults, and, neither at home nor abroad, dare moralists venture a
whisper to their prejudice. This is a serious drawback. America wants
more writers of the class who are said to prefer their country's good to
its favour, and more anxious to reform its vices than cherish the pride
of its virtues. Besides, we strongly suspect that the American
journalist is very careless about the truth. We mean the truth of fact,
which is part of the historic disposition of the age, as opposed to all
that is sensational. He resembles the French rather than the English
journalist in the tendency to regard good news as more important than
correct news. The English journals make it their business to present
their readers with news and not advice, with facts and not opinions, so
that they can form opinions for themselves, and the power of our press
is thus enormously increased, but only on conditions that effectually
prevent the arbitrary exercise of it. The American writers for the press
have followed our example in some degree, but their disposition to
provide startling and sensational intelligence is too often manifested
at the expense of truth. Mr. Maverick gives an account of a number of
disreputable hoaxes played by the newspapers upon the public of America,
which were justified, we presume, to the consciences of the authors by
the observation of Lord Bacon--'A mixture of lies doth ever add
pleasure; doth any man doubt that if there were taken from men's minds
vain opinions, nattering hopes, false valuations, and the like, it would
leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things?' The 'Moon
Hoax,' which was published in the New York _Sun_ in 1835, was one of the
most skilful and successful of these literary frauds. Successive numbers
of that paper contained a pretended extract from the pages of a
supplement to the _Edinburgh Journal of Science_, under the title of
'Great Astronomical Discoveries latterly made by Sir John Herschel,
LL.D., F.R.S., at the Cape of Good Hope.' The paper had a remarkable air
of scientific research, such as might deceive all but the most learned
and wary. The Herschel telescope was represented as affording a distinct
view of lunar roads, rocks, seas, cascades, forests, houses, people, and
monsters of various shapes. The 'Roorback Hoax' was a shameless attempt
to injure the character of J. K. Polk, when he was a candidate for the
Presidency, by representing him as possessing forty-three slaves who had
his initials branded into their flesh. The deception was wrought by
simply adding to a sentence in Featherstonehaugh's Travels in America
four lines of the hoaxer's own, recording the disgraceful lie referred
to. We confess that we cannot recognise the morality of a transaction
which Mr. Maverick records in the history of the _New York Times_,
without apparently the slightest suspicion of its dishonesty. When the
_New York Herald_ got hold of the single survivor of the ill-fated
Atlantic steamer, _Arctic_, which was lost in September, 1854, an
assistant on the _Times_ succeeded, by means of an adroit pressman, in
purloining an early copy from the _Herald_ press-rooms, and actually
published the _Herald's_ report an hour earlier than that journal. We
cannot understand what Mr. Maverick means by representing the _Herald_
as 'playing a trick to keep the news from the other papers,' unless the
_Herald_ was actually bound to supply its contemporaries gratuitously
with the exclusive news it had obtained from the survivor at its own
sole expense. The transaction seems to us merely a clever specimen of
American 'smartness.'
But we must draw these observations to a close. We cannot but admit that
the press of America, with all its defects, is an engine of great power.
It is on this ground we desire for it a close approximation to those
intellectual and moral qualities which have given British journalism
such an influence over the affairs of the whole world. In fact, two such
nations as America and Britain, working in the same language, should be
always learning from each other; for the eager energy of the one should
push forward the occasionally lagging progress of the other, and our
matured caution restrain their hasty inexperience. America is great in
all that leads to immediate and available results. She has given us
several of the greatest mechanical inventions of the age; she has far
excelled us in the theory and practice of religious liberty, as well as
in the more liberal recognition of denominational brotherhood among the
religious sects; while she has furnished a noble example of public
spirit in the support of religion, missions, and education. Let us hope
that in time she will equal, if not surpass us in a periodical
literature, which, if even still more intensely political than ours,
will display a breadth and strength of thought, together with a wisdom
and dignity, which will add immensely to its power. There is one aspect
of Transatlantic literature which already contrasts favourably with our
own, and that is its generally cordial recognition of Evangelical
Christianity. With the exception of the German and French newspapers,
which chafe under the restraints of a Christian country, and scoff at
Judaic sabbaths, Pharisaic church-going, and tyrannical priestcraft,
there are no newspapers of any position in the States that are avowedly
anti-Christian; and there is less disposition than formerly, on the part
of the American press generally, to exclude all reference to distinctive
Christianity. It was considered a remarkable circumstance at the time of
the American revival that several newspapers, notorious for a thinly
disguised infidelity, and for a most undisguised enmity to Evangelical
religion, should not only publish the most ample reports of the
movement, but commend it in a way that has had no parallel in English
journalism, even before the tide of public opinion had turned decisively
in its favour. It is the common custom still for American newspapers to
print the sermons of popular preachers, and to publish a large amount of
religious intelligence. The press is also intensely Protestant, and has
contributed to the growth of that enormous assimilating power by which
American Protestantism has absorbed generation after generation of the
Roman Catholic emigrants. The statistics of the Propaganda declare that
one half of the whole number has been lost to the Church of Rome; and
the explanation is, that they can no more escape from the influence of
American ideas than from the effects of the atmosphere and climate.
It becomes, therefore, a matter of the greatest consequence that the
literary guides of a nation with such a destiny as America, should
understand the responsibilities under which their power is exercised.
They should take care, above all things, to use their influence not to
materialize the mind of society, by obtruding material concerns too much
upon the attention, to the neglect of those moral and spiritual
interests which constitute the very foundations of its greatness. This
is a real danger, for, as De Tocqueville remarks, the tendency of modern
democracy is to concentrate the passions of men upon the acquisition of
comforts and wealth. They cannot be ignorant that the most clearly
marked line of social progress over the whole world is coincident with
the line of the Christian faith; that wherever true religion has had
free access to the centres of human action, a palpable advance has been
made in knowledge, liberty, and refinement; while poverty, injustice,
and licentiousness, which are the ulcers of a depraved society, have in
that degree been checked and healed. They must understand that honesty
is the grand necessity of the world at this time, in its politics as
well as its theology, in its commerce as well as its science. Let these
things be understood by the leaders of American thought, and we cannot
but anticipate a proud future for their country. It is a subject of just
congratulation to England that her children have stamped their character
on a vast continent, and, that instead of discontented colonies
subjected to her caprice, she can now point to a great people, with all
the best life of the ancient nations throbbing in their veins,
flourishing exactly in proportion to their freedom, and trained, through
all their bloody disasters which almost threatened to ruin their work,
to build a stronger rampart, and to reclaim a broader shore for
posterity. The interests of humanity demand that a nation so strong in
all the material elements of civilization, and manifesting such an
impetuous disregard of limit and degree in all its enterprises, should
be equally strong in its intelligence and its Christianity.
ART. II.--_Report from the Royal Commission on International Coinage.
1868._
Although during the deplorable struggle between Germany and France
public attention has been of necessity mainly directed to the conflict,
yet it is impossible, for many reasons, to do otherwise than regret this
concentration of interest. The last session of our Parliament was
fertile to an unusual degree in measures of public utility and
importance; but it is not too much to say that the difficulties incurred
by several of these measures in their passage through both Houses would
have been greatly enhanced had the engrossing events which have recently
agitated all Europe occurred at the time. The only satisfaction which
can be obtained in contemplating, even from a distance, the misery
inflicted on such countless thousands, arises from the hope that when
the last echoes of the strife have faded away, a peace, firm and
durable--durable because based on sound principles--may link together
those nations who are now suffering from the effects of the struggle.
Till this is the case, the evils arising from the war will not be
confined to those actually engaged in it. Meanwhile, it is really no
slight misfortune that many subjects, not unimportant to the country,
should fail to obtain the attention which they would otherwise have
received, in consequence of the superior interest of the central
European crisis.