The Sun.
London, England, 1869-05-12 00:00:00

711 E PUBLIC PRESS.

The New York Tribune has written a dignified
reply to some comments of the New York 7 lines on
the President's ostentatious neglect of the public
press. The 7 imes sass :—" No editor of an influen-
tial newspaper has been appointed to public office,
with one exception, and in that case it was promptly
declined. Whatever may have been the motive of
this exclusion, the fact is eminently serviceable to
the profession which it somewhat contemptuously
ignores." Alluding to itself, and the fact that for
twenty years those who had conducted the leading
journals were still the conductors. the Tribune asks:
Where are those who were leaders in our politics twenty
years ado —the Presidents, Cabinet Officers, Senators,
Govervors,Ministers —the buddingand ripened Statesmen?
All along since gone to flower and seed—their fame,
ashes; their power vanished into the mists. General
Grant is the tenth President the Tribune has known!
Ten Presidents—seven full Administrations and two
wars, and great renown and pageantry, and end-
less companies of great Statesmen ! All so many
ghosts to day - end occasionally a rusty ex-President,
or forgotten Senator, or neglected Minister (no:longer
extraordinary or plenipotentiary), elbows his way up
Broadway unknown even to the policeman. Yet
such influence as the Tribune may possess—its power
for good or evil remains with it—greater, we think, then
it was under Polk or Pierce or Johnson—still to be with
it, we trust, when t his Administration joins the ghosts of
its predecessors, and General Grant is crowded from his
seat by some " indispensable" warrior or statesman. We
sometimes feel like Hamlet when he walked among the
graves and the bones of the di ad men.

If considers that the Press pays those really valu-
able to it better than the Government, and valtrible
men only the Government should require, but not
requiring them, the journalists are better placed as
they are, and ought therefore' to be grateful for
being let alone. The Press will uphold Grant's
Administration where right, and oppose it where
wrong, whether he appoints one, or a hundred
editors; as it did when he was an unknown officer
without power, so it will do now that he is a Presi-
dent with 50,000 offices to bestow. To show what
position the Press ought to take, the following letter,
which will explain itself, is given :

To THE EDITOR OF TIIE " TIMES."

"Sir,---Having this day delivered into the hands of the
King the seals of office, I can, without any imputation of
an interested motive, or any impediment from scrupulous
feelings of delicacy, express my deep sense of the power-
ful support which that Government, over which I had the
honour to preside, received from the Times newspaper. If
do not offer the expressions of personal gratitude, it is
because I feel that such exptessions would do injustice to
the character of a support which was given exclusively
on the highest and most independent grounds of pub-
lic principle. I can say this with perfect truth, as I am
addressing one whose person even is unknown to me,
and who, during my tenure of power, studiously
avoided every species of intercourse which could throw
a suspicion upon the motives by which he was ac-
tuated. I should, however, be doing injustice to my
own feelings, if I were to retire from office without one
word of acknowledment, without at least assuring you of
the admiration with which I witnessed, during the ardu-
ous contest in which I was engaged, the daily exhibition
of that extraordinary ability to which I was indebted for
a support, the more valuable because it was an impartial
and discriminating support. - I have the honour to be, Sir,
ever your obedient and faithful servant,

" Whitehall, April 18, 1835." " ROBERT PEEL.
To which the editor returned this answer :
"sir, It gives me sincere satisfaction to learn from the
letter with which you have honoured me, bearing yester-
day's date, that you estimate so highly the efforts which
have been made during the last five months by the Tel
nes
newspaper to support the cause of rational and whole-
some Government which his Majesty had intrusted to
your guidance, and that you appreciate fairly the disin-
terested motive of regard to the public welfare, and to
that alone, through which this journal has been prompted
to pursue a policy in accordance with that of your Admi-
nistration. It is, permit me to say, by such motives only
that the Times, ever since I have known it, has been in-
fluenced, whether in defence of the Government of the
day, or in.constitutional resistance to it; and indeed there
exist no other motives of action for a journalist, compat-
ible either with the safety of the press, or with the poli-
tical morality of th 3 great bulk of its readers.

The Boston hotels are already receiving nume-
rous applications from all pacts of the country for accom-
modations in June in anticipation of visiting the "National
PCP.OO Jubilee." Effutts are being made by the Execu-
tive Commit tce to scent., the ztttentlauce of Strauss's famous
b:.11,1 from Vienna.

An election for director ..3 of t'ie Panama Railroad
Company was hold at Tom ke-httilding on -Monday, Apr'l
5. with the following result :—William 11. Atqiinwall, Jos.
W. Al op, James M. Prown, Henry Chauncey, Edward
Crunarcl, Frederick G. Fo:der, David llondley, Gouverneur
Kemldp, Charles P. Leverich, flow:iril Potter, David Ste-
watt, Theo. W. Riley, Wm. Whitewriglit, jun.
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