Connecticut western news., 1875-07-16
Tho Press and it's Duty.

From the address of Editor Bright before the Wisconsin Editorial Associa
 tion we clip the following interesting paragraph: Among the immoralist edi
 tors are those who are ever ready tC chuckle at the downfall of good people
 If a man or woman who has always borne perhaps to the Christian part of com
 munity, falls; if Christian statesman is caught in any of the peccadilloes tc which statesmen are said to be given; ol if minister of the gospel falls; if any of these are even charged with the omis
 sion of duties or the commission oi wrongs, the undisguised satisfaction and the malignant jeers, the hateful references, the evident effort to turn the event to some account against the very spirit of goodness and decency, the damnable spirit so wonderfully developed by the press for glorying in the downfall of good man or woman, or blow struck at 8 good principle, must make tho devil look up from his pit with more than mortal agony or envy. In the notorious Beecher-Tilton controversy which has occupied the attention of the whole world for the past year, we may see a noteworthy example of this, and from 1t draw @ not unuseful lesson. Without even an intimation respecting guilt or innocence; without making our sympathies or convictions prominent, let us consider the part the press of the United States has played in this last twelve months drama of moral woe and tortured decency. Never has it had such an opportunity for distinguishing itself as the guardian of morality and decency, and never has glorious op- portunity been more recklessly and ruthlessly thrown away. While, with hypc critical cant, it bewailed the heavy blow struck at the cause of religion and morality, it bent itself with universali. ty most deplorable to the uncanny task of intensifying all that was bad in the scandal, or could be tortured out of it, and made itself the exponent of the low est tastes of the toughest clements of our society. Instead of doing the noble work thrown in it's way in the interests of what should have been to it most sacred trust; insteod of springing will ingly and gladly into the social breach, and making itself noble champion be- hind whom suffering morality could take refuge. 1t was quick to strike it's strong est blows against her. The scandal has been hot house of disease for the pub lie mind for many weary months, but great as has been the Brooklyn curse, it is really as nothing compared with the vulture- press which has torn what was foulest from the loathsome carcass, and screaming, borne it all over the country. A pest house, where patients lie writhing in the agonies of loathsome disease, is Q thing horrible enough, but how shall we conceive the baseness of the wretches who would go to secure the seeds of dreaded disease and place them in our households where our dear ones could not escape the infectionl The trial ot MT. Beecher, it has been held, involved questions of far deeper importance than the guilt or innocence of the great pastor of Plymouth; the existence and sacred. ness of virtue, and purity, and character, and justice. This is not true, and thank God the fall of no one man can destroy these great principles. But if they had been involved, and if the press had been laborlug for their destruction, it could do little more than it has done. And, shameful as it is to acknowledy,, much of the o-called religious press as pulled stroke oar in this infamous effo t.