The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1898-03-03

B writer in the south Of Europe declared
That the King Of Naples had made 1t
unsafe for him to write on any subject
save natural history. Austria could
not bear Kossuth's journalistic pen
leading for the redemption Of Hungary.
Napoleon l., wanting to keep his iron
neel on the neck of nations, said that
the newspaper was the regent Of kings,
ana the only safe place to keep an
edltor was in prison. But the great
battle for the freedom of the press was
fought In the court rooms of England
ana the United States before this CEN
Jury began, when Hamilton made his
sreat speech in behalf of the freedom
OF >. Peter Zenger's Gazette in Ameri-
ca, and when Erskine made his great
speech IN behalf of the freedom to pub
llsh Paine's Rights Of Man" in Eng
land. Those were the Marathon and
the Ihermopylae where the battle was
Fought which decided the freedom of
the press In England and America, and
all the powers of earth and hell will
never again be able to put upon the
|
hopples of literary and political des-
potlsm. 1t is remarkable that Thomas
JEFFERSON, who wrote the Declaration
OF. Independence, ~ also wrote these
WORDS: If I had to choose between
a government without newspapers, and
newspapers without a government, I
would prefer the latter Stung by
some new fabrication in print, we come
to write or speak about an "unbridled
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 in
dlstlnctness of utterance we are report
ed as saying just the opposite Of what
we did say, and there is a small riot
OF semicolons and -hyphens and COM
mas, and We come to write or talk
about the "blundering printing press"
or we take up a newspaper full of So
c1al 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
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 con-
stitutional law, or political economy, or
works of science? How many elab-
crate poems or books Of travel? Not
many. In the United States the people
would not average one such book a
year for each Individual! Whence,
then, this intelligence, this capacity to
talk about all themes, secular and re-
~Igious; this acquaintance with science
and art; this power to appreciate the
beautiful and grand? Next to the BIZ
Bile, 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, Spaniards, American,
old and young, good and bad, sick and
we'll, before breakfast and after tea.
Monday morning, Saturday night,
Sunday and week day. I now declare
that consider the newspaper to be the
grand agency by which the gospel is
to be preached, ignorance cast out, op-
preston dethroned, crime extirpated,
the world raised, heaven rejoiced, and
God glorifed. In the clanking of the
printing press, as the sheets fly out I
hear the voice of the Lord Almighty
proclaiming to all the dead nations of
the earth, Lazarus, come forthw and
to the retreating surges of darkness,
LET there be light" In many Of our
city newspapers, protesting no more
than secular information, there have
appeared during the past thirty years
some of the grandest appeals in behalf
of religion, and some of the most ef-
fective interpretations of Gods govern
ment among the nations. Il
One of the great trials of the news
paper profession is the fact that they
of the world than any other profession.
Through every newspaper Office, day by
day, go the weakness of the world, the
vanities that want to be puffed, the
revenges that want to be wreaked,
all the mistakes that want to be cor
rected, all the dull speakers who want
to be thought eloquent, all the mean
ness that wants to get it's wares noticed
gratis in the editorial columns in order
to save the tax of the advertising COL
umn, all the men who want to be set
right who never were right, all the
crack-brained philosophers, with story
as long as their hair and as gloomy as
their fnger-nails, all the itinerant
bores who come to stay five minutes
| and stop an honr. From the editorial
and reportorial rooms all the follies
and shams Of the world are seen day
by day, and the temptation is to be-
lieve neither in God, man, nor woman
1t is no surprise to me that in your pro-
fession there are some skeptical men,
I only wonder that you believe any,