ns of
intercourse between parties which hear, and which address each other
without ever having been in immediate contact. When a great number of
the organs of the press adopt the same line of conduct, their influence
becomes irresistible; and public opinion, when it is perpetually
assailed from the same side, eventually yields to the attack. In the
United States each separate journal exercises but little authority, but
the power of the periodical press is only second to that of the people.
*b

[Footnote b: See Appendix, P.]

The opinions established in the United States under the empire of the
liberty of the press are frequently more firmly rooted than those which
are formed elsewhere under the sanction of a censor.

In the United States the democracy perpetually raises fresh individuals
to the conduct of public affairs; and the measures of the administration
are consequently seldom regulated by the strict rules of consistency or
of order. But the general principles of the Government are more stable,
and the opinions most prevalent in society are generally more durable
than in many other countries. When once the Americans have taken up an
idea, whether it be well or ill founded, nothing is more difficult than
to eradicate it from their minds. The same tenacity of opinion has been
observed in England, where, for the last century, greater freedom of
conscience and more invincible prejudices have existed than in all the
other countries of Europe. I attribute this consequence to a cause which
may at first sight appear to have a very opposite tendency, namely, to
the liberty of the press. The nations amongst which this liberty exists
are as apt to cling to their opinions from pride as from conviction.
They cherish them because they hold them to be just, and because they
exercised their own free-will in choosing them; and they maintain them
not only because they are true, but because they are their own. Several
other reasons conduce to the same end.

It was remarked by a man of genius that "ignorance lies at the two ends
of knowledge." Perhaps it would have been more correct to have said,
that absolute convictions are to be met with at the two extremities, and
that doubt lies in the middle; for the human intellect may be considered
in three distinct states, which frequently succeed one another. A man
believes implicitly, because he adopts a proposition without inquiry. He
doubts as soon as he is assailed by the objections