The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1898-03-05

could not bear Kossuth's journalistic
pen pleading for the redemption OF
Hungary. Napoleon L., wanting TO
keep his iron heel on the neck of ma
tions, said that the newspaper was the
regent of kings, and the only safe place
to keep an editor was in prison.
But the great battle for the free
dom of the press was fought in
the court rooms of England and
the United States before this century
began, when Hamilton made his great
speech in behalf of the freedom of j.
Peter Zenger's Gazette in America, and
when ErslSine made his great speech in
behalf of the freedom to publish Paine s
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 again
] be able to put upon the printing press
the handouts and the hopples of lit
erary and political despotism. 1t is
remarkable that Thomas jefferson,
who wrote the Declaration of indie
| pendence, also wrote these words:
"If l had to choose between q gov
ernmcnt 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
/ inf ,r
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 hypcns and
commas, aad we come to write or talk
about the "blundering printing press"
or we take up newspaper full of
social scandal and Of cases of divorce,
and we write or talk about n filthy,
scurrilous printing press" But this
morning ask you to consider the i'm
measurable and everlasting blessing of
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 book year for
each individual! Whence, then, this
| nj 70 10 IL
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 beach, hawked through the
cars! All read it-white and black,
German, lrishman, Swiss, Spaniard,
American, old and young, good and
bad, sick and well, before break fast
and after tea, Monday morning, Satur-
day night, Sunday and week day. l
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 glorifed. 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
nh n of oil
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 brigand among moral
forces; it is bcslimer 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 u 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. If 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 Arranged
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 pcrfecting
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-
epopai bilifv t1pnp Won than ,,nop INV