The mere body of this
ugly matter overwhelms the rare utterances of good men; the
sneering, the selfish, and the cowardly are scattered in
broad sheets on every table, while the antidote, in small
volumes, lies unread upon the shelf. I have spoken of the
American and the French, not because they are so much baser,
but so much more readable, than the English; their evil is
done more effectively, in America for the masses, in French
for the few that care to read; but with us as with them, the
duties of literature are daily neglected, truth daily
perverted and suppressed, and grave subjects daily degraded
in the treatment. The journalist is not reckoned an
important officer; yet judge of the good he might do, the
harm he does; judge of it by one instance only: that when we
find two journals on the reverse sides of politics each, on
the same day, openly garbling a piece of news for the
interest of its own party, we smile at the discovery (no
discovery now!) as over a good joke and pardonable stratagem.
Lying so open is scarce lying, it is true; but one of the
things that we profess to teach our young is a respect for
truth; and I cannot think this piece of education will be
crowned with any great success, so long as some of us
practise and the rest openly approve of public falsehood.
There are two duties incumbent upon any man who enters on the
business of writing: truth to the fact and a good spirit in
the treatment. In every department of literature, though so
low as hardly to deserve the name, truth to the fact is of
importance to the education and comfort of mankind, and so
hard to preserve, that the faithful trying to do so will lend
some dignity to the man who tries it.
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