mt
432
T1IK MAUCH OK INTEIjI.KCT.
Voij. vii,
tlio press. What can be its power?
When wo saw activity pervading every
workshop anil wealth glcamd from every
hamlet, we also saw this mighty industry
thrown to the winds and a million men
enraged by the harangues of the press,
step forth to nobly decide the fate of slav
crj. So thoroughly had the freeman of the
North been instilled with hatred forthe
horrors of slavery, that it required only the
electric spark to explode the mine of
civil war. With that struggle we realized
the power of the press.
Then when we see such a colossal pow
er augmented by its influence and intrin
sic value, vested in the press, how great
must be its trust, how grave its responsi
bility! Man can as easily fathom that
responsibility as estimate its power.
If conflicts have occured before, they
will occur again. If society has been
once revolutionized, it will be again. Up
on all these changes, these trials the press
now sits as judge and jury.
Society is ever active, either progress
ive or digressive. Every day presents a
new development in the mysteries of the
universe. The responsibility of the press
is then continual. If justice is demanded,
the press suggests. Without its support
the judge delays his decision. The me
chanic watches it for inventions; The
scicntest for new theories. Then when we
see the fate of society bound up in so
mighty an invention, wo can but wonder
at its complicated machinery yet quail
before its colossal power.
What we want, then, what the times
imperatively demand, is an impartial con
trol of the press, not monopolized by par
tisans but controlled by men who have
brains enough to look at both sides of the
same question. Without this partial re
form in the press the friends of liberty
may well mistrust the motives of its ac
lions. For though it has brougnt freedom
in its early youth.yet in itsgiganticgrowth
it must not snatch that liberty from our
grasp.
To protect this liberty and to insure the
purity of the'prcss, this 4has; become the
duty of the citizen. But to guide the so
cial and political interests of forty mill
ions of people, this.has become the duty,
this the responsibility of the American
press.
ToXOIMIIIjUS.
Till- MAHGU OF IN1ELLEOT.
From the time of creation till now,
change has been the one important word
stamped upon the pages of history.
Parts of the earth once graced by nut
lire's fairest ornaments now form the beds
of oceans. Cities, the birth-place of
thought and intelliuence, lie buried in the
dust. Nations have risen, passed away,
and are forgotten. Theories govern
meats, and customs have had their day
and been leplaeed by others. Languages,
by which mind communicated with mind,
are now unspoken. Countless ages have
marked these changes, but the end is not
yet. The crown of perfection, which the
nations of the earth have been slowly
Hearing, is .still immeasurably distant.
The past is unchangable; the present and
future are moulded by our lives. What
shall the future be? I doubt not that
sometime in the life of every individual,
this question .has presented itself, but to
very many it .remains unsolved. They
pass it by, and live they know not why.
Some, however, realize 'the responsibility
of their existence, and live for tliejennobl
ing of humanity and the enlightenment of
the world. No age is without .its few
great men. In reviewing the past, wo
find a Ciesar, the greatest ruler the world
has ever known, to whom the common
people bowed in reverence, and had no
will but Ciesar's; a Shakespeare, whose
dramas to-day move an audience to tears
or laughter, so rtal are his pictures; a
Michael Angelo, whose ;paintings hold
the eyes of the world in wonder and ad
miration; a Watt, who saw in invisible