Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1864-07-18
,Thc T.re,.-..Its Freedom.

| Books and newspapers are multiplied TO
such an extent, that he must indeed bepoor
who can not afford to read. No hamlet Is
SO obscure, no hearth so lowly, as to be be-
yond the reach Of the press. Daily, trl-
weekly, weekly, OF monthly, its welcome
messengers, teeming with the news OF the
day, or the sublimest truths OF philosophy,
visit and irradiate every corner of our land
Tremendous power land what weight
of ofresponsibility rests upon them that W sd
it. How pure should be his thoughts, how
elevated his sentiments, who undertakes to
inform the world How carefully should
he trace those lines, destined soon to be EN-
powered with ubiquity and immortality
Black indeed must be the heart of him who
will not tremble and doubt, before daring
to penetrate with the poisoned shafts OF in
fidelity, or the darker tale of fascinating
crime, the sacred home of innocence, and
the unguarded citadel of youth. There are
motives, ,weighty as all the interests of time,
grand as all the hopes of eternity. calling
upon the monarchs of the press to battle in
favor of the Right.
While we would hold up to derision the
incubator of folly, and to the judgment OF
common justice the defender of vice and
error wcwould as soon strike at the very
foundations of our system, as at the Free
dom of the Press. The casuist may doubt,
the theorist may find fault, the "loyalist"
may howl, but if we desire Liberty to re-
turn to this continent, and the principles of
Republican Government to obtain through
out the world, the Press must be Free.
In the long catalogue of human inprove-
ments; in that regular but infinitely di-
versified chain of machinery which has
conducted our race from the earliest ages to
the present time, we may search in vain for
an engine so potent, so worthy the highest
energies of intelligent men, as that which
the mechanical genius of the fifteenth CELL
tury bequeathed to the world. The time
was when learning was the peculiar priv
ilege of the few; even the manual labor of
longlife was insufficient to toaccumulate, when
it was too late for service, the very means
of an education. If talent was born to the
prince, he read the manuscripts of the
Fathers, extorted at the point of the bayo-
net the admiration of his subjects-as our
jolly monarch is trying to do-and, per-
haps, gave to his posterity new volumes,
or stale revisions of "high mysterious
dreams" Thus did old earth plod her
way-the dupe of false reasoning, and the
tool of tyrants-illunlinated only by the in
carnation of the Son of God, and the golden
links of chivalry, for the first five thousand
years. That mental and moral power,
which is to be found only in the vast ag-
gregate of man, possessing not even the
for its development, lay hidden,
sealed, from the objects on
which it was designed to act. To think, was
the business of the monarch; to obey the
province of the vassal. When the sun Of
letters rose upon the thick darkness of the
middle age, the world walked suddenly to
new being; and, as if refreshed by the ac-
cumulated vigor of long rest, or rather
astonished at the duration and depth of its
own lethargy, seized with avidity, and
exercised with overwhelming power, the
means presented for the recovery of its long
lost Freedom.