The Wadsworth dispatch. [volume] (Wadsworth, Nev.) 1892-1899, 1898-03-02

ate this power. So early az in 1920 there
were in Paris 1859 journals. Bnt in the
United States the newspaper has come
to unlimited sway. Though in l775
country, the number of published jour
mails is now counted hv thousands; and
toda,-wp NAV az well acknowledge it
a. not-the religious and secular news
papers the are great educators OF the
country.
But alas, through what struggle the
newspaper has tome to its present devel-
ment. Just as 1901 "a it began to dem
onstrate It's power, superstition and tyr
amy shackled it. There is nothing that
despotism so much fears and hates as
the p%rinting-press. A great writer in the
south of Europe declared that the King
Of Naples had made it unsafe for him to
write on anv subject save natural his
tory. Austria could not bear Kossuth's
journalistic pen pleading for the re-
iemption of Hungary. Napoleon l..
wanting to keep his iron heel on the
neck of nations, said that the newspa-
per was the regent of kings, and the
only safe place to keep an editor was in
prison. But the great. battle for the
freedom 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 be-
half of the freedom OF j. Peter Zenger's
Gazette in America, and when Erskine
made his great speech in behalf OF the
freedom to publish Paine's Rights OF
Man in England. Those were the Mar
athon and the Thermopylae where the
battle was fought which decided the
freedom OF the press in England and
America, and all the powers on earth
and hell will never again be able to put
upon the printing-press the handouts
and the hopples of literary and political
despotism. 1t is remarkable that
Thomas jefferson, who wrote the Decla-
ton of Independence, who wrote these
words: "If l had to choose between u
government without newspapers, and
newspapers without a government, l
would prefer the latter" Stnng by some
new fabrication in print, we come 10
write or speak about an "unbridled
printing press" Our new book ground
mp in unjust criticism, WI come to write
or speak about the unfair printing
press" Perhaps through IL own in
distinctness of utterance we are reported
as saving just the opposite of what We
did say, and there is a small riot OF semi
colons and hyphens and commas, and
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 a Filthy, scurrilous printing
press But this morning | ask you to
consider the unreasonable and ever
lasting blessing of a good newspaper.
l 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 constitutional
law, or political economy, or works Of
science? How many elaborate 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 intelli.
gence, this capacity to talk about all
themes, secular and religious; this ac-
quaintance with science and art this
power to appreciate the beautiful and
grand? Next to the Bible, the news
paper, swift-winged and and everywhere
present, flying over the fence, showed
under the door, tossed into the counting
house, laid on the workbench, hawked
through the cars! All read it; white
and black, German, Irishman, Swiss,
%Spanard, old and young, good and bad,
sick and we'll, before breakfast and after
tea, Monday morning, Saturday night,
Sunday and week day. | now declare
that | consider the newspaper to be a
grand agency by which the the gospel is
to be preached, ignorance cast out, OPP
preston dethroned, crime e~xtirpated,
the world raised, heaven rejoiced, and
God glorited. In the clanking of the
~printing-press, as the sheets fly out, I