their children;" and that although, when numbers combine to do evil, men may fail to punish the crowd of conspirators and rebels, a multitude cannot prevail against Omnipotence..

M. De Tocqueville says there is no country in which there is so little true independence of mind and freedom of discussion, as in America,—a statement which is confirmed by other travellers, and by Americans themselves.* This is perhaps the most striking example of the tyrannical sway of the majority. Let a man oppose, how conscientiously soever, the prevailing opinions of the people, and he will be slighted by those whom he has failed to convince; he must expect to lose all influence and celebrity, and to undergo a kind of social and political excommunication. Thus truth is often suppressed in deference to popular errors, and the progress of sound knowledge and improvement is hin

dered.

M. De Tocqueville says he perceives how, under certain laws, democracy may extinguish that intellectual freedom which is favoured by the social condition of democracy, so that after having broken through other

* "What makes our communications unprofitable in this country, is the dread of giving offence, now to the majority, and now to the fashionable or refined. We speak without force, because not true to our own convictions."-DR. CHANNING.

"Liberty of thought and opinion is strenuously maintained in this proud land, it has become almost a wearisome cant; our speeches and journals-religious and political-are made nauseous by the vapid and vain-glorious reiteration. But does it, after all, characterise any community among us? Is there any one to which a qualified observer shall point and say, there opinion is free? On the contrary, is it not a fact, a sad and deplorable fact, that in no land on this earth is the mind more fettered than it is here? That here, what we call public opinion has set up a despotism such as exists no where else?"-Sober Thoughts on the State of the Times.-Boston, 1835.

restraints, the human mind may become enslaved to the will of the multitude. "As for me," he says, “I am not the more willing to bow my neck to the yoke, because millions would force me to submit to it." (Part II. Vol. I.)

Flattery of his fellow-citizens, as the ruling power, is a tribute which every writer must pay. And M. De Tocqueville assigns as a reason why there have been so few great writers in the United States, that "literature cannot flourish without freedom of opinion, which does not exist in America." But in America, as well as in England, the treasures of British literature tend to elevate the standard of opinion, of intellect, of religion, and morality, and that literature has flourished in a country where opinion is free.

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I consider the people of the United States," says M. De Tocqueville, as a part of the English nation occupied in the cultivation of the forests of the new world, while the European portion of it, less occupied with the common cares and pursuits of life, is enabled to give itself more to reflection and intellectual advancement." He elsewhere observes, "One cannot conceive any thing so anti-poetical as the life of an American usually is."

The periodical press, by communicating information and discussing topics that are immediately and intensely interesting, greatly contributes to form that public opinion which it undertakes to express; and exercises so much power, that it has been said to constitute a fourth estate of the realm. Stamps and licenses not being required for the American public journals, they are conducted with little or no capital; and there are several thousand newspaper establishments in the United States. Religious newspapers are numerous; and doubtless many of them are useful, especially where other means of diffusing religious knowledge are wanting.

Most of the American editors are imperfectly educated; and not a few, having no character of their own to lose, assail other reputations most recklessly. There are some honourable exceptions to the generally corrupt and degraded character of the newspaper press, as it is described both by travellers and the Americans themselves. To discuss political questions well, considerable talent is necessary, but none whatever to traduce and vilify, to misrepresent and calumniate. Nay, the less. talent and the less principle, the more coarsely and scrupulously will that vile task be performed. These harpies attack the public conduct of statesmen, and invade the domestic retirement of private individuals.

It is a melancholy truth," said President Jefferson, "that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done. by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious, by being put into that polluted vehicle..........I will add, that he who never looks into a newspaper, is better informed than he who reads them; as he who knows nothing, is nearer the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehood and errors."-JEFFERSON's Memoirs, Vol. IV.

And the American writer, Mr. Cooper, observes, "In escaping from the tyranny of foreign aristocrats, we have created in our own bosom a tyranny of a character so insupportable, that a change of some sort is getting indispensable to peace."

The New York Herald, which is about the size of the London evening papers, is the most extensively circulated journal in the United States. Each number costs about a penny, and the editor says he sells about thirty thousand copies daily. A writer in the Foreign Quarterly Review, for October, 1842, in which the flagrant abuses of the American newspaper press are

forcibly exposed, describes the notorious editor of the New York Herald, and relates the circumstances of a trial in which he was convicted for two gross libels on Judge Noah. The court consisted of Judge Kent and two of the city aldermen. That eminent and upright judge thought the offence deserved imprisonment; but it had been contrived that an alderman supposed to be favourable to the editor should sit on the bench, out of his regular order, and in place of one who would have given a more unbiassed decision. By the votes of the two aldermen, the wealthy libeller was condemned to pay a small fine,-in mockery of justice. The parties conniving at his escape dreaded his lash, and his power to injure their prospects as candidates at some future election!

Judge Kent, although prevented from awarding the punishment most justly due, fearlessly delivered the following opinion, which sufficiently condemns the sentence of the majority of the court:- "He could conceive no greater curse to the community, than a paper so cheaply published as to be brought under the eye of every body, and yet dealing in falsehood and scandal from day to day, as its accustomed occupation: from the malignity of which no man was free; the columns of which were open to the gossip of every one base enough to act the part of an informer: from the assaults of which neither age nor sex, nor occupation nor profession was exempt: which had its emissaries scattered in the large towns and villages of the whole country, sending their communications to its columns, like the informations dropped into the lion's mouth in Venice: disclosing the secrets of the family circle, assailing the most sacred professions, and seeking to bring into contempt the sanctuary of justice itself."

The newspapers, being the staple literature of the majority, excite them to abuse the power with which

they are invested by the American constitution. And among persons of superior education and refinement, some, from their dread of the scurrilous abuse of that portion of the press, shrink from public stations in which they might usefully serve their country; and others, from the same cause, are led to swerve from an upright and honourable course. The newspapers, organs and arbiters of that public opinion whose despotic influence is felt by politicians of every grade, traverse the United States, even in the remotest wilds, in myriads. On they flow incessantly, fretting and foaming, like the bitter and briny surges of an angry

sea.

The article in the Foreign Quarterly Review, already referred to, contains various illustrations on this point. The extracts in the subjoined note, I have taken

"TO SUBSCRIBERS.-City subscribers of the Daily Herald, who may want the Sunday edition, without having it served on that day, can be supplied by the carriers on Monday morning."

"GREAT FUNERAL SERMON ON THE LATE DR. CHANNING.To-morrow evening, in the church of the Messiah, the Rev. Mr. Bellows will deliver a funeral sermon on the piety, genius, and character of the late William Ellery Channing, D.D.

"As the cause and the occasion of this matter is alike interesting and important to religion, to literature, to piety, and to true christian philosophy, we have made arrangements to report verbatim the services and sermon, and to publish them in the Herald, on Friday morning. We now invite the whole world to stand by and witness this intellectual effort of our splendid corps of reporters-and we challenge the whole press of New York, for a purse of 100 to 500 dollars, to be given to feed the poor, to meet us fairly, and to ascertain by actual fact what newspaper establishment deserves the highest credit for such enterprises."

"A NEW MOVEMENT IN OUR CITY POLITICS-TAKING the STUMP.-We have been expecting, in these latter days, to see some extraordinary and novel features developed in the approaching elections in this city; and, according to present