The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1896-04-01
SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.
REV. DR.. TAlMAGE FINDS IWC
UNIQUE TEXTS.

They Are the Most Potent Vehicles of
Knowledge of the Age.
WASHINGTON, March 22.-Newspa-
per row, as it is called here in Wash
ington, the long row of Offices con-
nected with prominent journals
throughout the land, pays so much at
tention to DR.. Talmage they may be
glad to hear what he thinks Of them
while he discusses subject IN which
the whole country IS interested, His
texts today weTe, And the wheels
were full Of eyes ezekiel X, 12), For
allthe Athenians and strangers which
were there spent their time in nothing
else but either to tell or to hear some
new thing" (Acts xvii, 2D.
What is preacher to 30 when he
finds two texts equally good and sug-
gestive2 In that perplexity | take
both. Wheels full of eyes, What
but the wheels of a newspaper print
ing press2 Other wheels are bind.
They roll on, pulling or crushing.
The manufacturers wheel how II
grinds the operator with faugpes and
rolls over nerve and muscle and bone
and heart, not knowing what it does.
The sewing machine wheel sees not
the aches and pains fastened to it
tighter than the band that moves it,
sharper than the needle which it plies.
Every moment of every hour Of every
day of every month OF every year
there are hundreds of thousands of
wheels of mechanism, wheels Of en-
terprise, wheels of hard work, in mo-
ton, but they are eyeless.
Not so the wheels of the printing
press. Their entire business is olook
and report. They are full OF optic
nerves, from axle to periphery. They
are like those spoken Of by Ezekiel as
full of eyes. Sharp eyes, nearsighted,
farsighted. They look up. They
look down. They look far
away. They take in the next street
and the next hemisphere. Eyes of
criticism, eyes of investigation, eyes
that twinkle with nirth, eyes glover
ing with indignation, eyes tender with
love, eyes of suspicion, eyes OF hope,
blue eyes, black eyes, green eyes, holy
eyes, evil eyes, sore eyes, political
eyes, literary eyes, historical eyes, re-
Igious eyes, eyes that see everything.
':And the wheels were were full of
eyes," But in my second text is the
worlds cry for the newspaper. Paul
describes a class OF people in Athens
who spent their time either in gather
ing the news or telling it. Why es-
pecially in Athens2 Because the more
intelligent people become the more
inquisitive they are-not about small
things, but great things.
The question tnen most frequently
is the question now most frequently
asked, What is the news2 To answer
that cry in the text for the newspaper
the centuries have put their wits to
work. China first succeeded and has
at Peking newspaper that has been
printed every week, for 1000 years,
printed on silk. Rome succeeded by
publishing The Acta Diurna, in the
same column putting fires, murders,
marriages and tempests. France sue
ceeded by a physician writing out the
news of the day for his patients. Eng
gland succeeded under Queen Eliza.
beth in first publishing the news of
the Spanish armada and going on un-
til she aad enough enterprise, when
the battle of Waterloo was fought, de-
ciding the destiny of Europe, to give
it one-third of a column in the London
Morning Chronicle, about as much as
the newspaper of our day gives of
small fire. America succeeded by
Benjamin Harris first weekly paper
called Public Occurrences, published
in Boston in 1890, and by the first dai-
ly, The American Advertiser, publish
ed in Philadelphia in 1854
The newspaper did not suddenly
spring upon the world, but came grad
ually. The genealogical line of the
newspaper is this: The Adam of
the race was circular or news letter
created by divine impulse in human
nature, and the circular begat the
pamphlet, and the pamphlet begat the
quarterly. and the quarterly begat the
weekly, and the weekly begat the
semi-weekly, and the semi-weekly be-
gat the daily. But, alas, by what
struggle it came to its present develop
ment! No sooner had its power been
demonstrated than tyranny and super
stition shackled it. There is nothing
that despotism so fears and hates as
printing press. It has too many eyes
in its wheel. A great writer declared
that the king of Naples made it unsafe
for him to write ofanything but nat
ural history. Austria could not en-
dure Kossuth's Journalistic pen plead
in for the redemption of Hungary.
Napoleon I, trying to keep his iron
heel on the necks Of nations, said,
editors are the regents of sovereigns
and the tutors of nations and are only
ft for prison" But the battle for the
freedom of the press was fought in the
courtrooms of England and America
and decided before this century began
by Hamilton's eloquent plea for J.
Peter Zenger's Gazette in America and
Erksine's advocacy of the freedom Of
publication in England. These were
the Marathon and Thermopylse in
which the freedom of the press was es-
tablished in the United States and
Great Britain, and all the powers of
earth and hell will never again be able
to put on the handouts and hopples Of
literary and political despotism. It is
notable that Thomas Jefferson, who
w1ote the Declaration of American
independence, wrote also, ''If had TO
choose between government without
newspapers or newspapers without
government, I should prefer the lat
ter" Stung by some base fabrication
coming to US in print, we come to
write or speak of the unbridled print.
ing press, or, our new book ground
up by an unjust critic, we come to
write or speak of the unfairness Of the
printing press, or perhaps through our
own indistinctness of utterance we are