s in this work upon
the press. There was a great deal of truth in what he said; but the
justice of some of his views was deprived of any effect by the
exaggeration and consequent injustice of others. The substance of his
remarks was that there were more newspapers in this country than in
Europe, but they were generally of a lower character. The multiplication
of them was due to the fact that little capital was required in their
creation, and little intelligence employed in their management. Their
number was, therefore, not a thing to be boasted of but rather to be
sorrowed over, since the quality diminished in an inverse ratio to the
quantity. Nor was there anything in the methods employed by the press
that justified any exultation in its prosperity. It tyrannized over
public men, over letters, over the stage, over even private life. Under
the pretence of preserving public morals, it corrupted them to the core.
Under the semblance of maintaining liberty, it was gradually
establishing a despotism as rude, as grasping, and as vulgar as (p. 179)
that of any state known. It loudly professed freedom of opinion, but
exhibited no tolerance. It paraded patriotism, but never sacrificed
interest. But its great fundamental failing was the untrustworthiness of
its statements. It existed to pervert truth. Its conductors were mainly
political adventurers. They were unscrupulous, but they were not so
utterly ignorant that they failed to see the necessity of occasionally
making correct assertions. It was, however, this mixture of fact with
fiction that was the chief cause of the evil influence exerted. The
result of it all was that the entire nation, in a moral sense, breathed
an atmosphere of falsehood. He concluded his indictment by declaring
that the American press would seem to have been expressly devised by the
great agent of mischief, to depress and destroy all that was good, and
to elevate and advance all that was evil.

This style of remark was certainly not designed to win newspaper favor
or support. But he went even farther in his novels of "Homeward Bound"
and "Home as Found." In those two works he drew the portrait of an
American editor in the person of Steadfast Dodge of the Active Inquirer.
All the baser qualities of human nature were united in this ideal
representative of the press. He was a sneak, a spy, a coward, a
demagogue, a parasite, a lickspittle, a fawner upon all from whom he
hoped help, a slanderer of all wh