Yet we cannot help
marvelling at the hallucination which can induce able men to prefer
the brief and illusory honors of political station to the substantial
and lasting power within the grasp of the successful journalist. He,
if any one,--he more than any one else,--is the master in a free
country. Have we not seen almost every man who has held or run for the
Presidency during the last ten or fifteen years paying assiduous and
servile court, directly or indirectly, or both, to the editor of the
Herald? If it were proper to relate to the public what is known on
this subject to a few individuals, the public would be exceedingly
astonished. And yet this reality of power an editor is ready to
jeopard for the sake of gratifying his family by exposing them in
Paris! Jeopard, do we say? He has done more: he has thrown it away. He
has a magnet in his binnacle. He has, for the time, sacrificed what it
cost him thirty years of labor and audacity to gain. Strange weakness
of human nature!
The daily press of the United States has prodigiously improved in
every respect during the last twenty years.
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