The Ledger Building. 655 establishments in New York, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New Orleans, has a building of its own. It is constructed of marble, and is a palace in appearance, and comfort, and convenience. Its press-room is said to be one of the finest in the country. It has eight drum cylinder presses-four of Hoe's and four of Taylor's—and an Andrews engine. Thus the Ledger stands superior in the periodical and news literature of America, and, with increased wealth, will do much towards developing the fresh, robust, and prolific intellect of the New World. En avant. CHAPTER XLI. THE PRESS CLUBS AND ASSOCIATIONS. ORIGIN OF THE PRESS CLUB OF NEW YORK.-KOSSUTH'S RECEPTION AND SPEECH. THE DICKENS BANQUET.-SPEECHES OF GREELEY, DICKENS, RAYMOND, CURTIS, AND HAWLEY.-THE PRESS SOCIAL ASSOCIATIONS. WHAT THEY DO.-NO CONNECTION WITH THE NEWS ASSOCIATIONS. ONE Saturday evening in the month of November, in 1851, there was a gathering of journalists at the Astor House in New York, to see what the Press should do in recognition of Kossuth, who was then flashing over the country like a meteor. Kossuth had been an editor in Hungary. He had been a lawyer, a politician, a patriot, a statesman. He had been fêted by each of these classes and professions. It was therefore considered to be the duty of the Press also to fête him as an editor. These journalists met at the Astor House for this purpose. Three gentlemen, Parke Godwin, of the Evening Post, Henry J. Raymond, of the Times, and one of the editors of the Herald, were selected as a Committee of Arrangements. It was decided to give the distinguished Magyar a dinner. The banquet took place at the Astor cember, 1851. It was a splendid affair. Kossuth, as usual, uttered a brilliant one. William Cullen Bryant, of the Evening Post, presided. George Bancroft, the historian, made some remarks, concluding with the sentiment, House on the 13th of De- The American Press-it is responsible for the liberties of mankind. That part of Kossuth's speech respecting the Press, and its power and influence, we give : I address you with joy, because, conscious of the immensity of the power which you wield, it is natural to feel some awe in addressing those in whose hands the success or the failure of our hopes is placed. Still, I equally know that in your hands, gentlemen, the independent republican Press is a weapon, but a weapon to defend truth and justice, and not to offend. It is no screen to hide, no snuffers to extinguish the light, but a torch lit at the fire of immortality, a spark of which is glistening in every man's soul, to prove its divine origin; a torch which you wield loftily and high, to spread light with it to the most lonely regions of humanity. And as the cause of my country is the cause of justice and truth, as it has in no respect to fear light, but rather wants nothing but light to see secured to it the support and protection of every friend of freedom, of every nobleminded man, these are the reasons why I address you with joy, gentlemen-the more with joy, because, though it is sorrowful to see that ill-willed misrepresentations or secret Austrian intrigues, distorting plain, open history to a tissue of falsehood and lies, know how to find their way even to a small, insignificant part Kossuth before the New York Press. 657 of the American Press, still I am proud and happy to see that the immense majority of the American Press not only proved inaccessible to these venomous intrigues, but, conscious of the noble vocation of an independent Press, and yielding to the generous inclination of freemen, of protecting truth and justice against the dark plots of tyranny, has, without any interference on my part, come forth to protect the sacred cause of Hungary. The independent Press of this great republic has in this very case also proved to the world that even against the mischievous power of calumnies the most efficient protection is the freedom of the Press, and not preventive measures, condemning human intellect to eternal minority. I address you, gentlemen, the more with joy, because through you I have the invaluable benefit to address the whole university of the great, glorious, and free people of the United States. That is a great word, gentlemen, and yet it is literally true. While, eighty years ago, immortal Franklin's own press was almost the only one in the colonies, now there are over three thousand newspapers in the United States, having a circulation of five millions of copies, and amounting in their yearly circulation to the prodigious number of nearly four and a half hundred millions; every grown man in the Union reads on the average two newspapers a week, and one hundred and five copies a year; nearly eighteen copies fall, in the proportion to the population, to every human being in the Union, man, woman, and child. I am told that the journals of New York State alone exceed in number those of all the rest of the world beyond your great Union, and the circulation of the newspapers of this city alone nearly exceeds those of the whole empire of Great Britain. But there is yet one particularly remarkable fact which I can not forbear to mention, gentlemen. I boldly declare that beyond the United States there exists scarcely a practical freedom of the Press-at least in Europe, not except perhaps Norway, of whose condition, in that respect, I am not quite aware. You know, gentlemen, how the Press is fettered throughout the European continent-even, for the present, in France itself, whose great nation, by a strange fate, sees, under a nominally republican but centralized government, all the glorious fruits of their great and victorious revolutions wasting between the blasting fingers of centralized administrative and legislative omnipotence. You know how the independent Press of France is murdered by imprisonment of their editors and by fees; you know how the present government of France feels unable to bear the force of public opinion, so much that in the French republic the very legitimate shout of "Vive la Republique" has almost become a crime. This very circumstance is sufficient to prove that in that glorious land, where the warm and noble heart of the French nation throbs with self-confidence and noble pride, a new revolution is an unavoidable necessity. It is a mournful view which the great French nation now presents, but it is also an efficient warning against the propensities of centralization, inconsistent with freedom, become inconsistent with self-government, and it is also a source of hope for the European continent, be. cause we know that things in France can not endure thus as they are; we know that to become a true republic is a necessity for France, and thus we know also that whoever be the man who in the approaching crisis will be honored by the confidence of the French nation, he will, he must be faithful to that grand principle of fraternity towards the other nations, which, being announced by the French Constitution to the world, raised such encouraging but bitterly disappointed expectations through Europe's oppressed continent. But it is chiefly, almost only Great Britain in Europe which boasts to have a free Press, and to be sure, during my brief stay in England, I joyfully saw that really there is a freedom to print, almost an unlimited one, so far that I saw printed advertisements spread at every corner, and signed by the publishers, stating that Queen Victoria is no lawful queen; that she ought to be sent to the Tower, and all those who rule ought to be hanged. Men laughed, and nobody cared about the foolish extravagancy. And yet I dare say, and I hope the generous people of Great Britain will not feel offended at my stating the fact, that there is no practical freedom of the Press. The freedom of the Press, to be a practical one, must be a common benefit to all, else it is no freedom, but a privilege. It is wanting two ingredients-freedom of printing and freedom of reading. Now there is no freedom of reading there, because there is no possibility for the people at large to do so-because the circulation of newspapers, the indispensable moral food of human intellect, is, by a heavy taxation, checked. The Press is a source of public revenue, and by the incumbrance of TT stamp and paper duties, made almost inaccessible to the poor. Hence it is that the newspapers in the United States are only one tenth, and in some cases one twentieth the price of English or French papers, and hence, again, is the immense difference in their circulation. In the United States several of the daily papers every morning reaching from thirty to forty thousand readers, whereas the London Times is considered to be a monster power because it has a circulation of from twenty-five to thirty thousand copies, of which I was told during my stay in England that the good, generous sense of the people has abated some six thousand copies in consequence of its foul hostility to the just and sacred cause of Hungary. Such being the condition of your Press, gentlemen, it must, of course, be a high source of joyful gratification to me to have the honor to address you, gentlemen, because in addressing you I really address the whole people of the United States-not only a whole people, but a whole intelligent people, gentlemen. That is the highest praise which can upon a people be bestowed, and yet it is no praise-it is the acknowledgment of a real fact. The very immensity of the circulation of your journals proves it to be so, because this immense circulation is not only due to that constitutional right of yours to speak and print freely your opinions; it is not only due to the cheap price which makes your Press a common benefit to all, and not a privilege to the rich, but it is chiefly due to the universality of public instruction, which enables every citizen to read. It is a glorious thing to know that this flourishing young city alone, where streets of splendid buildings proudly stand, where a few years ago the river spread its waves, or the plow tilled, nearly one hundred thousand children receive public education annually. Do you know, gentlemen, where I consider the most glorious monuments of your country? If it be so as I have read it once, it is that fact that when, in the steps of your wandering squatters, your engineers go on to draw geometrical lines, even in the territories where the sound of a human step never yet has mixed with the murmurs by which virginal nature is adoring the Lord-in every place marked to become a township, on every sixteenth square, you place a modest pole, with the glorious mark, " Popular Education Stock." This is your proudest monument. However, be this really the case or not, in every case, in my opinion, it is not your geographical situation, not your material power, not the bold, enterprising spirit of your people which I consider to be the chief guarantee of your country's future, but the universality of education; because an intelligent people never can consent not to be free. You will be always willing to be free, and you are great and powerful enough to be so good as your will. My humble prayers to benefit my country's cause I must so address to the public opinion of the whole intelligent people of the United States. You are the mighty engineers of this sovereign power upon which rest my country's hopes; it must be, therefore, highly gratifying to me to see, not isolated men, but the powerful complete of the great word" PRESS" granting me this important manifestation of generous sentiments and of sympathy; still I address you with fear, gentlemen, because you are aware that since my arrival here I had the great honor and valuable benefit to see my whole time agreeably occupied by the reception of the most noble manifestations of public sympathy, so much that it became entirely impossible for me to be thus prepared to address you, gentlemen, in a language which I but very imperfectly speak, as the great importance of this occasion would have required, and my high regards for yourselves had pointed out as a duty to me. However, I hope you will take this very circumstance for a motive of excuse. You will generously consider that whenever and wherever I publicly speak, it is always chiefly spoken to the Press; and, lowering your expectations to the humility of my abili ties, and to the level of the principal difficulties of my situation, you will feel inclined to some kind indulgence for me, were it only out of brotherly generosity for one of your professional colleagues, as I profess to be one. Yes, gentlemen, it is a proud recollection of my life that I commenced my public career in the humble capacity of a journalist. And in that respect I may perhaps be somewhat entitled to your brotherly indulgence, as you, in the happy condition which the institutions of your country insure to you, can have not even an idea of the tortures of a journalist who has to write with fettered hands, and who is more than fettered by an Austrian arbitrary preventive censorship. You have no idea what a torture it is to sit down to your writing-desk, the breast full of the necessity of the moment, the heart full of righteous feelings, the mind full of convictions and of principles, Von Beust on the Press. 659 and all this warmed by the lively fire of a patriot's heart, and to see before your eyes the scissors of the censor ready to fall upon your head like the sword of Damocles, lopping your ideas, maiming your arguments, murdering your thoughts; and his pencil before your eyes, ready to blot out, with a single draught, the work of your laborious days and of your sleepless nights; and to know that the people will judge you, not by what you have felt, thought, and written, but by what the censor wills; to know that the ground upon which you stand is not a ground known to you, because limited by rules, but an unknown, slippery ground, the limits of which lie but within the arbitrary pleasure of your censor, doomed by profession to be stupid, and a coward, and a fool; to know all this, and yet not to curse your destiny, not to deny that you know to read and to write, but to go on, day by day, in the torturing work of Sisyphus.-oh! it is the greatest sacrifice which an intelligent man can make to fatherland and humanity. And this is the present condition of the Press, not in Hungary only, but in all countries cursed by Austrian rule. Our past revolution gave freedom to the Press not only in my fatherland, but by indirect influence also to Vienna, Prague, Lemberg-in a word, to the whole empire of Austria. This very circumstance must be sufficient to insure your sympathy to my country's cause, as, on the contrary, the very circumstance that the victory of the Hapsburgian dynasty, achieved by treason and Russian arms, was a watchword to oppress the Press in Hungary, in Austria, in Italy, in Germany, nay, throughout the European continent. The contemplation that the freedom of the Press on the European continent is inconsistent with the preponderance of Russia, and the very existence of the Austrian dynasty, this sworn enemy of freedom and of liberal thought, your generous support will sweep away those tyrants and raise liberty where now foul oppression proudly rules. Among the speakers were Charles King, formerly of the New York American, and then of the Courier and Enquirer, Henry J. Raymond, of the Times, Parke Godwin, of the Evening Post, Charles A. Dana, of the Tribune, and Freeman Hunt, of the Merchants' Magazine. Au contraire of these opinions of Kossuth in 1851, we annex the views of Count Von Beust, the present leading statesman of Austria, who so recently and quietly settled the very troubles that Kossuth so elaborately ventilated through the Press of America. In an interview with the Vienna correspondent of the New York Herald on the 21st of December, 1869, Count Von Beust said: The condition of our Press is by no means as satisfactory as it might be. Instead of seriously ventilating important political questions, and arriving at the best means of their solution, as is done by journalism in your and other countries, they adopt the inferior tactics of dealing in vituperations and personalities, and thus forget the real cause at issue. So violently has this "national autonomy" question been brought forward, that it has completely put in the shade the Concordat excitement, and individual dissensions have been mixed up with it in such a manner as to undermine the harmony of the cabinet. Much fault must be attached to the venom of the Press; and, of all reforms, this is the most necessary. Up to 1848 the different nationalities lived peaceably enough together. After the revolution, and with the setting in of the reactionary period, bickerings commenced, which have slowly increased. The clamors of the Magyars of Hungary have much engrossed the attention of his (the count's) predecessors, though none of them had been able to find a remedy. One thing they considered unavoidable, namely, the protection of the German minority, and Count Schmerling's ingenious system of apportionment of franchise and qualifications of voters had answered its purpose most wonderfully. The increasing clamors of the non-German element were not hushed by the catastrophe of 1866; indeed, they became so loud in Hungaria—which, by ancient privileges and the compact mass of the Magyars, was the most entitled to be heard-that, when entering office in Austria after the war, I felt the necessity of grappling with the subject, and determined, as the only means of quieting the country, upon instituting the present dualistic form of gov |