The Arkansas advocate., 1835-12-18

opinion. But was not he portion of tb. sovereign people tool
 There is one consolation. Every prese and every man who fosters and advance. .h;;s .his;;s state of things are working fer destruction. The press, for example. Ita,.z carefully abstained from uttering any un,o pulaT opinion. It has always been on tbn side of the people--whieh means that side of the fence where most people are--buta af the same time it has boon active iii proscr. ping and hunting down men for that which IS now called heresy--to wit, an honest d;f. ference of opinion. Il has taught the 0so pie their lesson. That same press utters an unpopular opinion-or takes the unpow- lar side of the question -and down it goes It is ruined because t has always proser;- bed independence. It is ruined uniustIr too; because if would never have taken an unpopular step if it could have helped t.
 Just so 1t is with public men. t iztbs fashion now for men to be prescribed foy opinions sake-and the very men whom we see every day cashiered and reduced to the ranks for the vile offence of formiuq opinions different from those of their supe- rior. are those who introduced the system and by their own fawning and seryililY pre-. pared themselves for ruin.
 Whose fault Is ali this? Is ii of the peo- pie? No, sir, They have been forced to despise the conductors of the press andih servants of the public. Men can be as de- gradingly slaves to the public as to task master-and when the people has seen the press bending in abject sycophaney-nut- ut ter prostitution of independence--in com plete and absolute submission of principle and yielding of opinion, before the bar of public impulse and popular impressions, of course contempt for the press, and and sick sick ening at its seryility was engendered in the hearts of that people. How could tbe otherwise2 Can the public help despising the men who are ever smearing them with the unetion of fulsome aattery-prolessng a total submission of opinion to the will of the majority-and declaiming loudly the divinity and infallibility of popular impulse and feelinga Never, sir!
 The press, we say, has degraded itself It has dared not speak without its cue. 1t has feared to express opinions because they were unpopular, or might be so. t has feared even to attempt to teach the people, because it might teach unpalatable truths
 Look at the men who have been high in office during the last six years-the mag nates of the land. Have they been the bright and great spirits of the country--he men whose flames ring through all Eu- rope-the great giants of mental dominion! No, sir. The little pigmy intellects--the Lilliputan dabblers in the muddy waters of politics have been the men. To be sure there has been now and then an exception as Livingston and Cass-but take ihe whole together. They have crept out from the hooks of their obscurity, and sci them selves up in high places. This may per haps be aptly called the age of political mushrooms. How many men have been advanced to distinguished stations under
 this Government, who have sprung up out
 of obscurity, and returned to it again when
 their ephemeral race was over! How ma- ny men of mushroom growth exist now on- y by the grace of the General Government
 How many stipendiaries and pensoned placemen, with no other recommendation than political pariisanship-a most sulb- eient one in these degenerate days! ltlsa sure sign of degeneracy when great men become plenty and short lived. Favortlsnl is the simoom which blasts republcanlsm. I: ever reminds us of the Sybaritism of Ne. TO, and the degradation of the Roman se. nate under that dispenser of rewards ana punisEments.
 When men are cast aside for an hoilfs' avowal of opinion, and for exercising tho right of suffrage, the days of ostraclsm anu