Edwin Lawrence Godkin, the son of a Protestant clergyman and author, was born in the county of Wicklow, in Ireland, in 1831. He was educated at Queen’s College, Belfast, read for a short time for the English bar, but drifted into journalism by accepting the post of correspondent to the London Daily News during the Crimean War in 1853-54. The horror of war which he retained through his life was due to the glimpse of it he had in the Crimea. Soon afterwards he went to America, was admitted to the bar in New York, but never practised, spent some months in travelling through the Southern States on horseback, learning thereby what slavery was, and what its economic and social consequences, was for two or three years a writer on the New York Times, and ultimately, in 1865, established in New York a weekly journal called the Nation. This he continued to edit, writing most of it himself, till 1881, when he accepted the editorship of the New York Evening Post, an old and respectable paper, but with no very large circulation. The Nation continued to appear, but became practically a weekly edition of the Evening Post, or rather, as some one said, the Evening Post became a daily edition of the Nation, for the tone and spirit that had characterised the Nation now pervaded the Post. In 1900 failing health compelled him to retire from active work, and in May 1902 he died in England. Journalism 366 left him little leisure for any other kind of literary production; but he wrote in early life a short history of Hungary; and a number of articles which he had in later years contributed to the Nation or to magazines were collected and published in three volumes between 1895 and 1900. They are clear and wise articles, specially instructive where they deal with the most recent aspects of democracy. But as they convey a less than adequate impression of the peculiar qualities which established his fame, I pass on to the work by which he will be remembered, his work as a weekly and daily public writer.
He was well equipped for this career by considerable experience of the world, by large reading, for though not a learned man, he had assimilated a great deal of knowledge on economical and historical subjects, and by a stock of positive principles which he saw clearly and held coherently. In philosophy and economics he was a Utilitarian of the school of J. S. Mill, and in politics what used to be called a philosophical Radical, a Radical of the less extreme type, free from sentiment and from prejudices, but equally free from any desire to destroy for the sake of destroying. Like the other Utilitarians of those days, he was a moderate optimist, expecting the world to grow better steadily, though not swiftly; and he went to America in the belief that he should there find 367 more progress secured, and more of further progress in prospect, than any European country could show. It was the land of promise, in which all the forces making for good on which the school of Mill relied were to be found at work, hampered only by the presence of slavery. I note this fact, because it shows that the pessimism of Mr. Godkin’s later years was not due to a naturally querulous or despondent temperament.
So too was his mind admirably fitted for the career he had chosen. It was logical, penetrating, systematic, yet it was also quick and nimble. His views were definite, not to say dogmatic, and as they were confidently held, so too they were confidently expressed. He never struck a doubtful note. He never slurred over a difficulty, nor sought, when he knew himself ignorant, to cover up his ignorance. Imagination was kept well in hand, for his constant aim was to get at and deal with the vital facts of every case. If he was not original in the way of thinking out doctrines distinctively his own, nor in respect of any exuberance of ideas bubbling up in the course of discussion, there was fertility as well as freshness in his application of principles to current questions, and in the illustrations by which he enforced his arguments.
As his thinking was exact, so his style was clear-cut and trenchant. Even when he was writing most swiftly, it never sank below a high 368 level of form and finish. Every word had its use and every sentence told. There was no doubt about his meaning, and just as little about the strength of his convictions. He had a gift for terse vivacious paragraphs commenting on some event of the day or summing up the effect of a speech or a debate. The touch was equally light and firm. But if the manner was brisk, the matter was solid: you admired the keenness of the insight and the weight of the judgment just as much as the brightness of the style. Much of the brightness lay in the humour. That is a plant which blossoms so much more profusely on Transatlantic soil that English readers of the Nation had usually a start of surprise when told that this most humorous of American journalists was not an American at all but a European, and indeed a European who never became thoroughly Americanised. It was humour of a pungent and sarcastic quality, usually directed to the detection of tricks or the exposure of shams, but it was eminently mirth-provoking and never malicious. Frequently it was ironical, and the irony sometimes so fine as to be mistaken for seriousness.
The Nation was from its very first numbers so full of force, keenness, and knowledge, and so unusually well written, that it made its way rapidly among the educated classes of the Eastern States. It soon became a power, but a power of a new 369 kind. Mr. Godkin wanted most of the talents or interests of the ordinary journalist. He gave no thought to the organisation of the paper as a business undertaking. He scarcely heeded circulation, either when his livelihood depended upon the Nation of which he was the chief owner, or when he was associated with others in the ownership of the Evening Post. He refused to allow any news he disapproved, including all scandal and all society gossip, to appear. He was prepared at any moment to incur unpopularity from his subscribers, or even to offend one half of his advertisers. He took no pains to get news before other journals, and cared nothing for those “beats” and “scoops” in which the soul of the normal newspaper man finds a legitimate source of pride. He was not there, he would have said, to please either advertisers or subscribers, but to tell the American people the truths they needed to hear, and if those truths were distasteful, so much the more needful was it to proclaim them. He was absolutely independent not only of all personal but of all party ties. A public man was never either praised or suffered to escape censure because he was a private acquaintance. He once told me that the being obliged to censure those with whom he stood in personal relations was the least agreeable feature of his profession. Whether an act was done by the Republicans 370 or by the Democrats made no difference to his judgment, or to the severity with which his judgment was expressed. His distrust of Mr. James G. Blaine had led him to support Mr. Cleveland at the election of 1884, and he continued to give a general approval to the latter statesman during both his presidential terms. But when Mr. Cleveland’s Venezuelan message with its menaces to England appeared in December 1895, Mr. Godkin vehemently denounced it, as indeed he had frequently before blamed particular acts of the Cleveland administrations. He sometimes voted for the Republicans, sometimes for the Democrats, according to the merits of the transitory issue or the particular candidate, but after 1884 no one could have called him either a Republican or a Democrat.
Independence of party is less rare among American than among European newspapers; but courage such as Godkin’s is rare everywhere. The editor of a century ago had in most countries to fear press censorship, or the law of political libel, or the frowns of the great. The modern editor, delivered from these risks, is exposed to the more insidious temptations of financial influence, of social pressure, of the fear of injuring the business interests of the paper, which are now sometimes enormous. Godkin’s conscientiousness and pride made him equally indifferent to influence and to threats. As 371 some one said, you might as well have tried to frighten the east wind. Clear, prompt, and self-confident, judging everything by a high standard of honour and public spirit, he distributed censure with no regard either to the official position or to the party affiliations of politicians. The “Weekly Day of Judgment” was the title bestowed upon the Nation by Charles Dudley Warner, who himself admired it. As Godkin expected—or at least demanded—righteousness from every one, he was more a terror to evildoers than a praise to them that do well, and the fact that, having no private ends to serve, he thought only of truth and the public interest, made him all the more stringent. Because he was, and found it easy to be, fearless and independent, he scarcely allowed enough for the timidity of others, and sometimes chastised the weak as sternly as the wicked. An editor who smites all the self-seekers and all the time-servers whom he thinks worth smiting, is sure to become a target for many arrows. But as Godkin was an equally caustic critic of the sentimental vagaries or economic heresies of well-meaning men or sections of opinion, he incurred hostility from quarters where the desire for honest administration and the purity of public life was hardly less strong than in the pages of the Nation itself. Though he took no personal part in politics, never appeared on platforms nor in any way put himself 372 forward, his paper was so markedly himself that people talked of it as him. It was not “the Nation says” or “the Post says,” but “Godkin says.” Even his foreign birth was charged against him—a rare charge in a country so tolerant and catholic as the United States, where every office except that of President is open to newcomers as freely as to the native born.
He was called “un-American,” and I have heard men who admired and read the Nation nevertheless complain that they did not want “to be taught by a European how to run this Republic.” True it is that he did not see things or write about them quite as an American would have done. But was this altogether a misfortune? The Italian cities of the Middle Ages used to call in a man of character and mark from some other place and make him Podestá just because he stood outside the family ties and the factions of the city. Godkin’s foreign education gave him detachment and perspective. It never reduced his ardour to see administration and public life in America made worthy of the greatness of the American people.
No journal could have maintained its circulation and extended its influence in the face of so much hostility except by commanding merits. The merits of the Nation were incontestable. It was the best weekly not only in America but in the world. The editorials were models 373 of style. The book reviews, many of them in earlier days also written by Godkin himself, were finished in point of form, and, when not his own, came from the ablest specialist hands in the country. The “current notes” of progress in such subjects as geography, natural history, and archæology were instructive and accurate. So it was that people had to read the Nation whether they liked it or not. It could not be ignored. It was a necessity even where it was a terror.
Yet neither the force of his reasoning nor the brilliance of his style would have secured Godkin’s influence but for two other elements of strength he possessed. One was the universal belief in his disinterestedness and sincerity. He was often charged with prejudice or bitterness, but never with any sinister motive; enemies no less than friends respected him. The other was his humour. An austere moralist who is brimful of fun is rare in any country. Relishing humour more than does any other people, the Americans could not be seriously angry with a man who gave them so abundant a feast.
To trace the course he took in the politics of the United States since 1860 would almost be to outline the history of forty years, for there was no great issue in the discussion of which he did not bear a part. He was a strong 374 supporter of the Northern cause during the War of Secession, and by his letters to the London Daily News did something to enlighten English readers. When the problems of reconstruction emerged after the war, he suggested lines of action more moderate than those followed by the Republican leaders, and during many subsequent years denounced the “carpet-baggers,” and advocated the policy of restoring self-government to the Southern States and withdrawing Federal troops. Incensed at the corruption of some of the men who surrounded President Grant during his first term, he opposed Grant’s re-election, as did nearly all the reformers of those days. By this time he had begun to attack the “spoils system,” and to demand a reform of the civil service, and he had also become engaged in that campaign against the Tammany organisation in New York City which he maintained with unabated energy till the end of his editorial career.[58] In 1884 he led the opposition to the candidacy of Mr. Blaine for President, and it was mainly the persistency with which the Evening Post set forth the accusations brought against that statesman that secured his defeat in New York State, and therewith his defeat in the election. It was on this occasion that the nickname 375 of Mugwump[59] was first applied to Mr. Godkin by the ablest of his antagonists in the press, Mr. Dana of the New York Sun, a title before long extended to the Independents whom the Post led, and who constituted, during the next ten or twelve years, a section of opinion important, if not by its numbers, yet by the intellectual and moral weight of the men who composed it. When currency questions became prominent, Mr. Godkin was a strong opponent of bimetallism and of “silverism” in all its forms, and a not less strenuous opponent of all socialistic theories and movements. It need hardly be added that he had always been an upholder of the principles of Free Trade. Like a sound Cobdenite, he was an advocate of peace, and disliked territorial extension. He opposed President Grant’s scheme for the acquisition of San Domingo, as he afterwards opposed the annexation of Hawaii. His close study of Irish history, and his old faith in the principle of nationality, had made him a strenuous advocate of Home Rule for Ireland. But no one was farther than he from sharing the feelings of the American Irish towards England. He condemned the threats addressed in 1895 to Great Britain over the Venezuela question; and glad as he was to 376 see that question settled by England’s acceptance of an arbitration which she had previously denied the right of the United States to demand, he held that England must beware of yielding too readily to pressure from the United States, because such compliance would encourage that aggressive spirit in the latter whose consequences for both countries he feared. Never, perhaps, did he incur so much obloquy as in defending, almost single-handed, the British position in the Venezuelan affair. The attacks made all over the country on the Evening Post were, he used to say, like storms of hail lashing against his windows. At the very end of his career, he resisted the war with Spain and the annexation of the Philippine Islands, deeming the acquisition of trans-Oceanic territories, inhabited by inferior races, a dangerous new departure, opposed to the traditions of the Fathers of the Republic, and inconsistent with the principles on which the Republic was founded. No public writer has left a more consistent record.