Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1875-09-23
Helena, Montana, Thursday, September %, 1875.

tempt to cast reproach upon the genius of a
free press. 1t is the great economic illumi-
nator of all practical human aspects, politics,
art, religion, society, morals 1t is at once
the tribunal of taste and the articulator of
thought. It is the handmade Of enterprise,
the fortress of order, the mailed, invincible
right arm of freedom. [Applause.
Like commerce, it gives health and vigor
to the life of nations; like commerc, its scep-
ter stretches from the shining temples of the
Orient to the swimming forests of the
Thames. Its shrouds stiffen and it's white
sheets fill with the winged gales of Progress,
beating foaming paths through conquered
waters, dashing on steeds of fire along iron
ways, harnessing the elements to its chariot.
reading the mysteries of the magnet, making
a courier of the lightning and guides of the
sun and stars, it courses its way in majesty,
in power and in glory over boundless sea
of possibilities, and it's dominion broadens
with every swelling of the tide. Applause !
Its many colored fabric is meshed and fash
Toned in the beneficent loom of cumulative
emprisy, and its shifting shuttle marks the
pace of the worlds advance
But if piratic hands grasp the scepter and
change it to a murderous cudgel; if its bellied
sails are blackened with fumes from hell. and
bloated with the charnel houses vapors; if,
instead of argosies engaged in fair trade, we
have slavers, seeking their cargoes in the
fever-haunted jungles of slander; wreckers,
lighting false beacons to lure noble ships
upon rocks of confidence; pirates, whose
decks ere slippery with the blood of their
victims; if, narrowing the horizon of its op-
portunties down to spite and hindrance and
slanders foul and stale and false and inhu-
man, the press becomes the plunderer of the
regulations of men living and dead, then,
even as the nations of the earth combine for
the determination of the outlaws of the sea,
so ought communities to combine against the
pirates of the press. [Great applause Have
we not such pirates among us? Why, fellow
citizens, for twenty years the San Francisco
Bulletin has crouched like bloodless frog on
stone, [laughter,] gloating and croahing
and puking in the face of nature. [Applause
and laughter. For twenty years it has lived
on the morbidness of public sentiment and
the depraved appetites of the curious and the
envious. It has traduced the living and de-
famed the dead; it has never advocated
measure of public utility; it has never devel-
oped an industry it has never aided charity;
it has never encouraged public work; it
has never put bread into a mans mouth, or
hope into woman's heart. Applause Its
life has been sordid and soulless, cruel to all
generosity of impulse, and uncompensating
to mankind. Its track has been marked with
the slum of it's slanders, and the blood of its
victims. will not enumerate the great hearts
that have gone to their graves smarting with
the sores inflicted by the slanderous arrows
of the San Francisco Bulletin. You know
them as we'll as do. And say tonight, in
this presence, that its existence is a blot upon
the fair form of noble journalism and dis
grace to the civilization of San Francisco.
[ Applause. My fellow -citizens in the name
OF him who has gone; in the name of the
gallant heart now pulseless in death at Lone
Mountain; in the name of that spirit which
brOods above this presence and flashes from
your eyes tonight; in the name of our civil
lization and our chivalry; in the name of all
the impulses OF human nature; in the name
of God, let this be the last man slain by the
San Francisco Bulletin. Tremendous ap-
plause. A voice-'You are right''] Let us
have no violence, 10 destruction of types or
presses; nothing to bring disgrace upon
order or law, nothing to give the people who |
own the sheets an opportunity to make dam
ages out of the city: but let every man in this
vast assemblage, and every man who can be
or reached by the voice of any
member of this vast assemblage, form from
his time forth resolute determination never
o advertise, nor to buy, to touch, or to have
anything to do with the accursed sheet. Tire
nendous applause So may we legally and !
effectively accomplish the result. So may
We vindicate the memory of our benefactor.
Let us do as men do to destroy scorpions
when they encircle them with fire. Let us
environ it with the fire of public indignation,
nd let it die as the scorpion dies. stinging
tself to death. [Applause.