St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1898-03-26

Rights of Man in England. Those
were the Marathon and the Thermopy.
lac, where the battle was fought which
decided the freedom of the press in
England and America. and all the pow
ers of earth and hell will never agar
be able to put upon the printing press
the handouts and the hopples of lit
erary and political despotism- 1t i:
remarkable that Thomas jefferson
who wrote the Declaration of Inde
pendence, also wrote these words
.'If / had to choose between a gov
ernment without newspapers, and
newspapers without government,
would prefer the latter" Stang by
some new fabrication in print. we
come to write or speak about an ''un-
bridled printing press Our new book
ground up in unjust criticism, we come
to write or speak about the unfair
printing press" Perhaps through our
own indistinctness of utterance we are
reported as saying just the opposite OF
what we did say, and there is a small
riot of semicolons and hypens and
commas, aad we come to write or talk
about the ''blundering printing press,
or we take up a newspaper full OF
social scandal and of cases of divorce,
and we write or talk about filthy,
scurrilous printing press" But this
morning ask you to consider the i'm
measurable and everlasting blessing OF
q good newspaper.
find no difficulty in accounting for
the worlds advance What has made
the change? Books" you say. No.
sir. The vast majority of citizens do
not read books. Take this audience,
or any other promiscuous assemblage,
and how many histories have they
read? How many treatises on consti-
tutional law, or political economy, or
work of science? How many elaborate
poems or books of travel? Not many.
In the United States the people would
not average one such a book a year for
each individual! Whence, then, this
intelligence, this capacity to talk
about all themes, secular and
religious; this acquaintance with
science and art; this power to appre-
ciate the beautiful and grand? Next
to the Bible, the newspaper. swift
winged and everywhere present, flying
over the fence, showed under the door,
tossed into the counting-house, laid on
the work bench, hawked through the
cars! All read it-white and black,
German, Irishman, Swiss, Spaniard,
American, old and young, good and
bad. sick and well, before breakfast
and after tea, Monday morning, Satur-
day night, Sunday and week day.
now declare that l consider the news
paper to be the grand agency by which
the Gospel is to be preached. igno-
rance cast out, oppression dethron-
ed. crime extirpated. the world raised,
Heaven rejoiced. and God glorified. In
the clanking of the printing press. as
the sheets fly out. hear the voice of
the Lord Almighty proclaiming to all
the dead nations of the earth: ''Laza-
rus, come FORTH and to the retreating
surges of darkness. LET there be
light" In many of our city newspa-
pers. protesting no more than secular
information. there have appeared dur
ing the past 80 years some of the grand
est appeals in behalf of religion, and
some of the most effective interpreta-
tions of Gods government among the
nations
There are only two kinds of newspa-
pers-the one good, very good. the
other bad, very bad. A newspaper
may be started with an undecided
character. but after it has been going
on for years everybody finds out just
what it is; and it is very good or it is
very bad. The one paper is the en-
bodiment of news, the ally of virtue,
the foe of crime, the delectation of ele-
waited taste, the mightiest agency on
earth for making the world better. The
other paper is a brigand among moral
forces: it is beslimer of reputation. it
is the right arm of death and hell. it is
the mightiest agency in the universe
for making the world worse and bat
Ting against the cause of God. The
one an angel of intelligence and mercy.
the other a fend of dark
ness. Between this Archangel and
this Fury is to be fought the great bat
tie which is to decide the fate of the
world. II you have any doubt as to
which is to be victor, ask the
prophecies, ask God; the chief batteries
with which He would vindicate the
right and thunder down the wrong are
now unlimbered. The great Armaged-
don of the nations is not to be fought
with swords, but with steel pens; not
with bullets, but with type; not with
common, but with lightning perfecting
presses; and the Sumters, and the
Moultries. and the Pulaskis, and the
Gibraltars of that conflict will be the
editorial and the editorial rooms of
our great newspaper establish
ments Men of the press, God
has put more stupendous re-
sponsibility upon you than upon any
other class of persons What long
strides your profession has made in in
fiuence and power since the day when
Peter Shelter invented cast metal type,
and because two books were found just
alike they were ascribed to the work
of the devil; and books were printed
on strips of bamboo; and Rev. Jesse
Glover originated the first American
printing press; and the common coun-
ell of New York, in solemn resolution,
offered $500 to any printer who would
come there and live; and when the
speaker of the honse of parliament
in England announced with indig-
nation that the public prints had
recognized some of their doings, until
in this day, when we have in this coun-
try many thousands of skilled stenog-
raphers. and newspapers sending out
copies by the billion. The press and
the telegraph have gone down into the
same great harvest field to reap, and
the telegraph says to the the news
paper: iii rake while you bind"
and the iron teeth of the telegraph
are set down at one end of the
harvest field and drawn clean
across, and the newspaper gathers up
the sheaves. setting down one sheaf on
the breakfast table in the shape of .
morning newspaper. and putting down
another sheaf on the tea table in the
shape of an evening newspaper; and
that man who neither reads nor takes