is easier than to set
up a newspaper, and a small number of readers suffices to defray the
expenses of the editor.

The number of periodical and occasional publications which appears
in the United States actually surpasses belief. The most enlightened
Americans attribute the subordinate influence of the press to this
excessive dissemination; and it is adopted as an axiom of political
science in that country that the only way to neutralize the effect of
public journals is to multiply them indefinitely. I cannot conceive
that a truth which is so self-evident should not already have been more
generally admitted in Europe; it is comprehensible that the persons who
hope to bring about revolutions by means of the press should be desirous
of confining its action to a few powerful organs, but it is perfectly
incredible that the partisans of the existing state of things, and the
natural supporters of the law, should attempt to diminish the influence
of the press by concentrating its authority. The Governments of Europe
seem to treat the press with the courtesy of the knights of old; they
are anxious to furnish it with the same central power which they have
found to be so trusty a weapon, in order to enhance the glory of their
resistance to its attacks.

In America there is scarcely a hamlet which has not its own newspaper.
It may readily be imagined that neither discipline nor unity of
design can be communicated to so multifarious a host, and each one is
consequently led to fight under his own standard. All the political
journals of the United States are indeed arrayed on the side of the
administration or against it; but they attack and defend in a thousand
different ways. They cannot succeed in forming those great currents of
opinion which overwhelm the most solid obstacles. This division of the
influence of the press produces a variety of other consequences which
are scarcely less remarkable. The facility with which journals can be
established induces a multitude of individuals to take a part in
them; but as the extent of competition precludes the possibility of
considerable profit, the most distinguished classes of society are
rarely led to engage in these undertakings. But such is the number of
the public prints that, even if they were a source of wealth, writers
of ability could not be found to direct them all. The journalists of
the United States are usually placed in a very humble position, with a
scanty education and