schools that are being daily evolved," he continued, "imposes the utmost vigilance upon the press, which has no means of dividing its higher duties. In spite of the utmost caution, many great and small offences, legal, executive, legislative, and judicial, even now need the rod of correction; but the wrong-doers often make good their escape from deserved chastisement, by reason of the multiplicity of the offenders and of their offences, which an ordinary lifetime would not afford the opportunity of investigating. The many rods now in pickle are soaking in the brine, but are not yet saline enough for those big scholars who are so far advanced as to know better than the little ones, whom they call their constituents, and upon whom they have the cunning to charge the responsibility primarily resting upon their own inexcusable violation or non-observance of the fundamental rules which they well know have been made for the government of all."
Continuing in the same caustic vein, the great reviewer laughingly exclaimed, "You cannot imagine how backward, considering their years and stature, some of these big ones are. It seems to me that in exact proportion to their imposing exterior is the selfish littleness of their interior. You do not know what a thankless task it is to teach some of these plodding dunces, nor the time it takes to lecture one set of offenders in private, and another in public, and that, too, often without any result. We newspaper men thus have our hands full. Providence will help civil rights when it is strong enough to help itself. The press presents a variety of teachers, called organs,and each is charged with the responsibility of keeping together its own flock, which is scattered over a wide extent of country.
"You must see the injustice," he continued, "of fastening upon the press what the Supreme Court charges Congress with neglecting and what you charge the courts and the pleaders generally with avoiding, by issues as feigned in substance as John Doe v. Richard Roe was in form. The daily and weekly journals, the monthly and quarterly magazines, are beacon-lights which guide the wandering minds of millions, and their lamps must be kept trimmed and bright.
"Besides, you must bear in mind, that we have each our separate hospitals, wards, and sick-list, and that extreme caution
