Connecticut western news., 1896-03-26
TUTORS OF NATIONS.
NkWStkPeks THE SUBJECT OF pA.
 TALMAoe's SERMON.

Dasssmtaaters of Knowledge to the Multi
 tnde and an Acearste Histocy of the
 rins-The Most Potent Influence For
 8ood on Earth.
 WASHINGTON, March 22.-Newspa- per row, as it is called here in Wash ineton, the long row of offices connected with prominent journals throughout the land, pays so much attention to Dr. Tamaae they may be glad to hear what he thinks of them while he discusses a subject in which the whole country is interested. His text today was. "And the wheels were full of eyes" (Ezekiel \, l2), "For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing" tActs xvii, all
 What is . preacher to do when he finds two texts equally good and sng- sestiver In that perplexity take both. Wheels full of eyes? What but the wheels of a newspaper printing press? Other wheels are.blind. They roll on, pulling ar crushing. The manufacturer wheel--how it grinds the operator with fatigues and rolls over nerve and mus- ,ele and bone and heart, not knowing what it does. The sewing machine wheel sees not the aches and pains fas- tened 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 enter prise. wheels of hard work, in motion, but they are eyeless
 Not so the wheels of the printing press. Their entire business is to look and report. They are full of optic nerves. from a1le to periphery. They arc like those spoken of by Ezekiel. as full of eyes Sharp eyes. near sighted, far sighted. They look up. They look down. They look far away. They take in the next streeAe and the next hemi- sphere. Eyes of criticism, eyes of inves- tigation, eyes thas twinkle with mirth, eyes glowering with indignation, eyes tender with love. eyes of suspicion, syes of hope. blue eyes. black eyes, green eyes, holy eyes,, evil eyes, sore eyes. political eyes, literary eyes, his eorical eyes. religious eyes, eyes that see everything. And the wheels were fall of eyes. But in my second text is the world g cry for the newspaper. Paul describes class of people in Athens who spent their time either in gather ing the news or telling it. Why espe- oially in Athens3 Because the more intel hgens people beoome. ths more inquisi- tive. they are-noe about small things, but great thipga
 Genealogy of the Newspaper.
 The question then most frequently is the question now most frequently asked. What is the newsl 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 a newspaper that has been printed every week for 1000 years, printed on silk. Rome succeeded by publishing Tho ,Acta Diurna. in the same colnmns putting fires, murders, marriages and tempestG France suc- oeeded by physician writing out the news of the day for his patients. Eng land succeeded under Queen Elizabeth in first publishing the news of the Span- ish armada. and going on until she had enough enterprise. when the battle of Waterloo was fought. deciding the des- tiny of Europe, to give it one-third of 8 column in the London Morning Chron- tcle, about as much as the newspaper of our day gives of a small fire. America succeeded by Benjamin Harris first weakly paper called Public Occurrences. publiahed in Boston in 1890, apd by the first daily. The American Advertiser, published in Philadelphia in l7S4.'
 The newspaper did not suddenly spring upon tho world, but came gradually. The genealogical line of the newspaper is this: The Adam of the race was a cir cular or news letter. created by divine impulse in human nature, and the cir cular begat the pamphlet. and the pam phlet begat the quarterly, and the quar- serly begat tho weekly, and the weekly begat the semiweekly. and the semi weekly begat the daily. But alas. by what struggle it came to its present development No sooner had its power been demonstrated than tyranny and su- psrstition shackled it. There is nothing that desposism 90 fears and hates as a printing prees. It has too many eyes in its wheel A great writer declared that the king of Naples made it unsafe for him to write of anything but natural history. Austria could not endure Kos- suth's journalistic pen pleading for the redemption of Hungary. Napoleon I. trying to keep his iron heel on the neck of nations, said, Editors are the re- gents q sovereigns and the tutors of na- lions and are only fit for prison" But tho 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 Erskine's advocacy of the freedom oe publication in England. These wero the Marathon and Ther- mopyap in which the freedom of the press was established in the United States and Great Britain. and all the powers of earth and he'll will never again te able to put on the handcuffs and hopples of literary and political des- potism. IL Is notable that Thomas Jef- ferson, who wrote the Declaration ot American Independence, wrote also: "I I had to choose between 8 government without newspapers or newspapers with. out . government. should prefer the latter" stung by some base fabrication coming to us in print, we come to write CT spsak of the unbridled printing press or. Cur new book ground up by an un' inst critic, we come to write or speak oa tho uufairness of the printing press; or. perhaps, through our own indistinctness of uttsrance, we are reported as saying just the opposite of what we did say, and there is a small riot of semicolons, byphens and commas. and we come tc speak or write of the laundering print ing press; or. seeing paper filled with divorce cases or social scandal, we speah