had been the master of the journal, instead of the writer, the politician, and the philanthropist, the Tribune might have won the splendid prize. Mr. Greeley is not a great journalist. He has regarded journalism rather as a disagreeable necessity of his vocation, and uniformly abandoned the care of it to others. An able man generally gets what he ardently seeks. Mr. Greeley produced just such a paper as he himself would have liked to take, but not such a paper as the public of the island of Manhattan prefers. He regards this as his glory. We cannot agree with him, because his course of management left the field to the Herald, the suppression of which was required by the interests of civilization.

The Tribune has done great and glorious things for us. Not free, of course, from the errors which mark all things human, it has been, and is, a civilizing power in this land. We hope to have the pleasure of reading it every day for the rest of our lives. One thing it has failed to do, -to reduce the Herald to insignificance by surpassing it in the particulars in which it is excellent. We have no right to complain. We only regret that the paper representing the civilization of the country should not yet have attained the position which would have given it the greatest power.

Mr. Raymond, also, has had it in his power to render this great service to the civilization and credit of the United States. The Daily Times, started in 1852, retarded for a while by a financial error, has made such progress toward the goal of its proprietors' ambition, that it is now on the home stretch, only a length or two behind. The editor of this paper is a journalist; he sees clearly the point of competition; he knows the great secret of his trade. The prize within his reach is splendid. The position of chief journalist gives power enough to satisfy any reasonable ambition wealth enough to glut the grossest avarice, and opportunity of doing good sufficient for the most public-spirited citizen. What is there in political life equal to it? We have no right to remark upon any man's choice of a career; but this we may say, that the man who wins the first place in the journalism of a free coun try must concentrate all his powers upon that ore work, and

as an editor, owe no allegiance to party. He must stand above all parties, and serve all parties, by spreading before the public that full and exact information upon which sound legislation is based.

During the present (1865-6) session of Congress we have had daily illustration of this truth. The great question has been, What is the condition of the Southern States and the feeling of the Southern people? All the New York morning papers have expended money and labor, each according to its means and enterprise, in getting information from the South. This was well. But every one of these papers has had some party or personal bias, which has given it a powerful interest to make out a case. The World and News excluded everything which tended to show the South dissatisfied and disloyal. The Tribune, on the other hand, diligently sought testimony of that nature. The Times, also, being fully committed to a certain theory of reconstruction, naturally gave prominence to every fact which supported that theory, and was inclined to suppress information of the opposite tendency. The consequence was, that an inhabitant of the city of New York who simply desired to know the truth was compelled to keep an eye upon four or five papers, lest something material should escape him. This is pitiful. This is utterly beneath the journalism of 1866. The final pre-eminent newspaper of America will soar far above such needless limitations as these, and present the truth in all its aspects, regardless of its effects upon theories, parties, factions, and Presidential campaigns.

Presidential campaigns, that is the real secret. The editors of most of these papers have selected their candidate for 1868; and, having done that, can no more help conducting their journals with a view to the success of that candidate, than the needle of a compass can help pointing awry when there is a magnet hidden in the binnacle. Here, again, we have no right to censure or complain. Yet we cannot help marvelling at the hallucination which can induce able men to prefer the brief and illusory honors of political station to the substantial and lasting power within the grasp of the successful journalist. He, if any one, — he more than any one else, is the master in a free country. Have we

not seen almost every man who has held or run for the Presidency during the last ten or fifteen years paying assiduous and servile court, directly or indirectly, or both, to the editor of the Herald? If it were proper to relate to the public what is known on this subject to a few individuals, the public would be exceedingly astonished. And yet this reality of power an editor is ready to jeopard for the sake of gratifying his family by exposing them in Paris! Jeopard, do we say? He has done more: he has thrown it away. He has a magnet in his binnacle. He has, for the time, sacrificed what it cost him thirty years of labor and audacity to gain. Strange weakness of human nature!

The daily press of the United States has prodigiously improved in every respect during the last twenty years. To the best of our recollection, the description given of it, twenty-three years ago, by Charles Dickens, in his American Notes, was not much exaggerated; although that great author did exaggerate its effects upon the morals of the country. His own amusing account of the rival editors in Pickwick might have instructed him on this latter point. It does not appear that the people of Eatanswi were seriously injured by the fierce language employed in "that false and scurrilous print, the Independent," and in "that vile and slanderous calumniator, the Gazette." Mr. Dickens, however, was too little conversant with our politics to take the atrocious language formerly so common in our newspapers "in a Pickwickian sense"; and we freely confess that in the alarming picture which he drew of our press there was only too much. truth.

"The foul growth of America," wrote Mr. Dickens, "strikes its fibres deep in its licentious press.

"Schools may be erected, east, west, north, and south; pupils be taught, and masters reared, by scores upon scores of thousands; colleges may thrive, churches may be crammed, temperance may be dif fused, and advancing knowledge in all other forms walk through the land with giant strides; but while the newspaper press of America isin or near its present abject state, high moral improvement in that: country is hopeless. Year by year it must and will go back; year by year the tone of public feeling must sink lower down; year by year the Congress and the Senate must become of less account before all

decent men; and, year by year, the memory of the great fathers of the Revolution must be outraged more and more in the bad life of their degenerate child.

"Among the herd of journals which are published in the States, there are some, the reader scarcely need be told, of character and credit. From personal intercourse with accomplished gentlemen connected with publications of this class I have derived both pleasure and profit. But the name of these is Few, and of the others Legion; and the influence of the good is powerless to counteract the mortal poison of the bad.

"Among the gentry of America, among the well-informed and moderate, in the learned professions, at the bar and on the bench, there is, as there can be, but one opinion in reference to the vicious character of these infamous journals. It is sometimes contended — I will not say strangely, for it is natural to seek excuses for such a disgrace that their influence is not so great as a visitor would suppose. I must be pardoned for saying that there is no warrant for this plea, and that every fact and circumstance tends directly to the opposite conclusion.

"When any man, of any grade of desert in intellect or character, can climb to any public distinction, no matter what, in America, without first grovelling down upon the earth, and bending the knee before this monster of depravity; when any private excellence is safe from its attacks, and when any social confidence is left unbroken by it, or any tie of socia! decency and honor is held in the least regard; when any man in that free country has freedom of opinion, and presumes to think for himself, and speak for himself, without humble reference to a censorship which, for its rampant ignorance and base dishonesty, he utterly loathes and despises in his heart; when those who most acutely feel its infamy and the reproach it casts upon the nation, and who most denounce it to each other, dare to set their heels upon and crush it openly, in the sight of all men, then I will believe that its influence is lessening, and men are returning to their manly senses. But while that Press has its evil eye in every house, and its black hand in every appointment in the state, from a President to a postman,while, with ribald slander for its only stock in trade, it is the standard literature of an enormous class, who must find their reading in a newspaper, or they will not read at all,-so long must its odium be upon the country head, and so long must the evil it works be plainly visible in the Republic.

"To those who are accustomed to the leading English journals, or te

the respecta e journals of the Continent of Europe, to those who are accustomed to anything else in print and paper, it would be impossible, without an amount of extract for which I have neither space nor inclination, to convey an adequate idea of this frightful engine in America. But if any man desire confirmation of my statement on this head, let him repair to any place in this city of London where scattered numbers of these publications are to be found, and there let him form his own opinion."

From a note appended to this passage, we infer that the newspaper which weighed upon the author's mind when he wrote it was the New York Herald. The direct cause, however, of the general license of the press at that time, was not the Herald's bad example, but Andrew Jackson's debauching influence. The same man who found the government pure, and left it corrupt, made the press the organ of his own malignant passions by bestowing high office upon the editors who lied most recklessly about his opponents. In 1843 the press had scarcely begun to recover from this hateful influence, and was still the merest tool of politicians. The Herald, in fact, by demonstrating that a newspaper can flourish in the United States without any aid from politicians, has brought us nearer the time when no newspaper of any importance will be subject to party, which has been the principal cause of the indecencies of the press.

The future is bright before the journalists of America. The lose of the war, by increasing their income and reducing their expenses, has renewed the youth of several of our leading journals, and given them a better opportunity than they have ever had before. The great error of the publishers of profitable journals hitherto has been the wretched compensation paid to writers and reporters. To this hour there is but one individual connected with the daily press of New York, not a proprietor, who receives a salary sufficient to keep a tolerable house and bring up a family respectably and comfortably; and if any one would find that individual, he must look for him, alas! in the office of the Herald. To be plainer: decent average housekeeping in the city of New York now costs a hundred dollars a week; and there is but one salary of that amount paid in New York to a journalist who owns