To him forty-nine students in every fifty are indebted for the only post-graduate course they ever receive. Many others would have no education at all if it were not for him.
He does not always know his business so well that he could not know it better, but whatever he does know he imparts steadily, as well as some that he does not honor.
He is the only influence upon whom the public can absolutely depend to right any wrong which is being endured in spite of the efforts and oaths of legislators. When law is lazy and legislators are venal it is the editor, and the editor only, who comes to the relief of the public. The public will not do this for itself. It seems to consider its duty done when it casts its ballot. More than half a century ago, when editors were not supposed to think their souls their own, the first Napoleon said, “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.” Napoleon certainly knew the value of bayonets.
The newspaper is the universal tribunal. It is an open court and there is justice of a sort for every one there at a trifling cost, one cent, two or three, as the case may be. The editor is the lawyer to whom the poor man must of necessity come. His court is one of equity, and it is to equity courts after all that all of us are inclined to resort when we insist upon a final decision.
He is the people’s advocate. Before a law can be suggested in legislature or Congress to undo a wrong or strengthen a right, the editor has already suggested it, debated both sides of it and rendered a decision, frequently a dozen or twenty decisions, which the public are inclined to admit or regard as accurate. He sometimes gets hold of a subject wrong end first, but he will submit to correction and improvement quicker than any judge or jury on record. He may not always admit that he has changed his mind, or that he turned over, or that he has turned his coat, but the change is there all the same, to any one who will read his paper.
He is the only biographer and historian which the mass of the people can read. And he gives
