The French nation understood fully how to appreciate
this power. Napoleon, with his own hand, wrote articles for the press,
and so early as in 1829 there were in Paris 169 journals. But in the
United States the newspaper has come to unlimited sway. Though in
1775 there were but thirty-seven in the whole country, the number of
published journals is now counted by thousands; and to-day--we may as
well acknowledge it as not--the religious and secular newspapers are
the great _educators of the country_.
In our pulpits we preach to a few hundreds or thousands of people; the
newspaper addresses an audience of twenty thousand, fifty thousand, or
two hundred thousand. We preach three or four times a week; they every
morning or evening of the year. If they are right, they are gloriously
right; if they are wrong, they are awfully wrong.
I find no difficulty in accounting for the world's advance. Four
centuries ago, in Germany, in courts of justice, men fought with their
fists to see who should have the decision of the court; and if the
judge's decision was unsatisfactory, then the judge fought with the
counsel.
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