The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1870-10-01
THE PACIFIC
Commercial Abbertiser,
SATURDAY. OCTOBER 1.

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The change of hands which this paper has re-
Gently met with, has led us into a train of refec-
tions upon the subject of Journalism generally at
these islands. At no period of our history do
we recollect of such a number of newspapers,
weekly and monthly, being presented for public
patronage as the present and when we say the
public, we refer to the native as well as the
foreign portion. Verify newspaper literature
may be said to be rampant. 1t has been said,
/ that i'm our world, it is seldom that we find any
unmixed good, but, we take the ground broadly.
that in our community the intelligence dissent
mated by the public journalist, both native and
foreign, has been and is a marked type of our
civilization and progress, albeit, that journalism
may have descended at times into the province of
too caustic censure and personal invective. We
maintain that to the Hawaiian its benefits have
been incalculable shut out as he is from the
immense treasures of the English language in
any other form of literature, his knowledge of
the great outside, world has been almost wholly
derived from the perusal of his weekly sheet.
In the lone recesses of remote valleys, his
newspaper has come to him like a Ministering
Angel of intelligence and peace, serving to i'm
prove and beguile, many a leisure hour which
otherwise might have been passed in idleness and
sloth. We have had the pleasure, when %sojourn-
ing in remote districts of the islands, of an
evening, for example, to meet a company of
natives, one reading while the rest were sitting
around as attentive listeners, and we have been
amused at the comments and arguments made
among themselves when the article was finished
in many instances showing a quickness of COM
prehension for which the Hawaiian does not
always get credit. The foreigner has the ad-
vantage of not being dependant entirely upon
the local issue for his news, but still away from
the capital, where foreign papers are not
always to be had, the artisan and the laborer
gladly welcome the Honolulu journal, where the
foreign news are sorted out and condensed to
suit his particular palate. We do not propose,
at present, to enter into the history of journalism
at these islands, most attractive theme. That
may form the subject of a future article when we
are furnished with data. OF course we are not
to be understood as desiring to enter upon any
eulogium of newspaper literature, it needs none
it is emphatically a literature of the eternal nOU.
To be deprived of our paper would be nearly the
same by being deprived of one of our senses
therefore, he who ministers at the altar of journ-
alism has no mean mission to perform in the
grand economy of society. If honest and fear
less, he speaks trumpet-tongued, and like the
great luminary of nature, which, daily rising in
the east, dispenses light and warmth to all within
its circle. Under our constitutional Government,
the press has all the freedom it could desire, and
by the character it possesses, Is one of the most
powerful exhibits that we can present of our
advancement as a people to foreign nations.
Such then being our views of the field upon
which we have entered, we address ourselves to
our task, cheerfully conscious of rectitude of
purpose, and if not attaining the high aim pro-
posed, it will not have been for want of endeavor.