contents. Now, though many journals are high-toned, not a few are edited on the principle that they must please to live, and the pleasure they conceive is of no noble or generous order. A. M. Fairbairn.

The freedom of the press is an excellent thing and is wholly consonant with the principles upon which all free governments are based. But as governments are now drawing the line at what is known as anarchy in one form, they should go a step farther and define anarchy in the press. The man who throws a bomb or wields a stiletto in the cause of anarchy, in reality is not so dangerous to free government as a press that regards nothing as too sacred or as too polluting to be spread before its readers. -W. C. Gray.

Many people are in the habit of complaining bitterly of the intrusion of the newspaper reporter into every nook and corner of the state, and even into the privacy of home; but in this extreme publicity is really to be found a new means of social, industrial, and governmental reform and progress. As Emerson said, "Light is the best policeman." There are many exaggerations, perversions, and inaccuracies in this publicity; but on the whole it is a beneficent and a new agency for the promotion of the public welfare. Such publicity has become possible partly through man's new power over nature, as seen in the innumerable applications of heat and electricity, and partly through the universal capacity to read.

For almost all social, industrial, and political evils, publicity gives the best hope of reasonable remedy. Publicity exposes not only wickedness, but also folly and bad judg ment. It makes crime and political corruption more difficult and far less attractive. The forger, burglar, and corruptionist need secrecy for two reasons: first, that they may

succeed in their crimes; and secondly, that they may enjoy the fruits of their wickedness. The most callous sinner finds it hard to enjoy the product of his sin if he knows that everybody knows how he came by it. No good cause ever suffered from publicity; no bad cause but instinctively avoids it. So new is this force in the world that many people do not yet trust it, or perceive its immense utility. In cases of real industrial grievances or oppressions, publicity would be by far the quickest and surest means of cure, vastly more effective for all just ends than secret combinations of either capitalists or laborers. The newspapers, which are the ordinary instruments of this publicity, are as yet very imperfect instruments, much of their work being done so hastily and so cheaply as to preclude accuracy; but as means of publicity they visibly improve from decade to decade, and, taken together with the magazines and the controversial pamphlet, they shed more light on the social, industrial, and political life of the people of the United States than was ever shed before on the doings and ways of any people. This force is distinctly new within this century, and it affords a new and strong guarantee for the American Republic.

- Charles W. Eliot.

Should there be any restrictions on the Freedom of the Press?

It has been found conducive to the public welfare to forbid the publication of libels and of obscene and immoral literature. Publications tending to excite riot are dangerous; but progress and the purity of

public administration are so largely dependent upon publicity, discussion, and criticism, that no unnecessary restrictions should be placed upon the press.

If the newspaper is the school of the people, and if upon popular education and intelligence the success and prosperity of popular government depends, there is no function in society. which requires more conscience as well as ability.

- George W. Curtis.

News is an impalpable thing-an airy abstraction; to make it a merchantable commodity somebody has to collect it, condense it, and clothe it in language; and its quality depends upon the character of the men employed in doing this. Edwin L. Godkin.

The legal responsibility of newspapers is a reality, but their moral responsibility is greater and more important.

Charles A. Dana.

As a part of the right of personal security, the preservation of every person's good name from the vile arts of detraction is justly included. The laws of the ancients, no less than those of modern nations, made private reputation one of the objects of their protection. - James Kent.

Power, unless wedded to proportionate legal responsibility, is a despotism which is always degrading, debasing, dangerous, and, sooner or later, disastrous. Let the legal responsibility of the English press be equivalent to the greatness of its power. Let the law of libel be drastic, but let it also be just. Let there be no interference with the rightful and beneficent privileges of a free public press. Let the English nation take

heed that there is no maiming of the liberty of the English press, which is the bulwark of the national liberty wherein we rejoice, of that liberty which is the vital breath of the strong national greatness and the imperial grandeur wherewith Eng land, as a most favored nation, has been blessed and honored by the all-ruling Providence. If we decide that the open air of liberty, the heaven-sent air, is too rough and rude for our own breathing, and refuse to inhale it till it has become especially prepared for our consumption according to the views of Professor Squeamish and Doctor Fad and Mrs. Coddle, national decadence and imperial dissolution will be the sure and well-merited punishment for such contemptible and flagrant folly. -John B. Hopkins.

What has the love of Liberty done for the race?

It is one of the strongest impulses of the soul and has been one of the chief causes of progress. Civilization is nearly synonymous with freedom. When men love liberty they are brave and progressive; those who do not love liberty are degraded and despised.

A freeman contending for liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.

George Washington.

Those who have died for this cause and country may have "builded better than they knew," but they knew they did all they could. And with what they did we are content; the value of their deeds is still immeasurable.

-John C. Breckenridge.

Freedom is not an end in itself, but a means only; a means of securing justice and happiness, the real end and aim of states, as of every human heart. Charles Sumner.

A century and more has passed, and as the foundations of this government are more firmly settled, as the great structure reared by our fathers now spans the continent from ocean to ocean, and has victoriously established its right to be, political liberty has ceased to be the mere dream of the enthusiast and has become the every-day fact of the men of thought and action in the world. - David J. Brewer.

The claim which our country presents, for giving no second or subordinate character to the age which has just closed, rests only on what has been accomplished, at home and abroad, for elevating the condition of mankind, for advancing political and human freedom, for promoting the greatest good of the greatest number, for proving the capacity of man for self-government, and for "enlightening the world" by the example of a rational, regulated, enduring constitutional liberty. And who will dispute or question that claim? In what region of the earth ever so remote from us, in what corner of creation ever so far out of the range of our communication, does not some burden lightened, some bond loosened, some yoke lifted, some labor better remunerated, some new hope for despairing hearts, some new light or new liberty for the benighted or the oppressed, bear witness and trace itself, directly or indirectly, back to the impulse given to the world by the successful establishment and operation of free institutions on this American continent? -Robert C. Winthrop.

One of the most effective motive forces in human history has been the love of freedom. From the earliest dawn of