Many of the lords could not read the deeds of their own
estates. What has made the change?
"Books," you say.
No, sir! The vast majority of citizens do not read books. Take this
audience, or any other promiscuous assemblage, and how many histories
have they read? How many treatises on constitutional law, or political
economy, or works of science? How many elaborate poems or books of
travel? How much of Boyle, or De Tocqueville, Xenophon, or Herodotus,
or Percival? Not many!
In the United States, the people would not average one such book a
year for each individual!
Whence, then, this intelligence--this capacity to talk about all
themes, secular and religious--this acquaintance with science and
art--this power to appreciate the beautiful and grand? Next to the
Bible, the _newspaper_,--swift-winged, and everywhere present,
flying over the fences, shoved under the door, tossed into the
counting-house, laid on the work-bench, hawked through the cars! All
read it: white and black, German, Irishman, Swiss, Spaniard, American,
old and young, good and bad, sick and well, before breakfast and after
tea, Monday morning, Saturday night, Sunday and week day!
I now declare that I consider the newspaper to be the grand agency
by which the Gospel is to be preached, ignorance cast out, oppression
dethroned, crime extirpated, the world raised, heaven rejoiced, and
God glorified.
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