ise
higher than its fountain. The Hudson River will not flow backward over
the Adirondacks. The press of New York is fed and sustained by the
commerce of New York, and the press of New York to-day, bad as it is in
many respects--and I take my full share of the blame it fairly
deserves--is just what the merchants of New York choose to have it. If
you want it better, you can make it better. So long as you are satisfied
with it as it is, sustain it as it is, take it into your families and
into your counting-rooms as it is, and encourage it as it is, it will
remain what it is.

If, for instance, the venerable leader of your Bar, conspicuous through
a long life for the practice of every virtue that adorns his profession
and his race, is met on his return from the very jaws of the grave, as
he re-enters the Court-room to undertake again the gratuitous
championship of your cause against thieves who robbed you, with the
slander that he is himself a thief of the meanest kind, a robber of
defenceless women--I say if such a man is subject to persistent
repetition of such a calumny in the very city he has honored and
served, and at the very end and crown of his life, it is because you do
not choose to object to it and make your objection felt. A score of
similar instances will readily occur to anyone who runs over in his
memory the course of our municipal history for the last dozen years, but
there is no time to repeat or even to refer to them here.

And so, Mr. President, because this throng of gentlemen, gathered about
the doors, pay me the too great compliment by remaining standing to
listen when they have started to go home--let me come back to the text
you gave me, and the sentiment with which we began: "The Press--right or
wrong; when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set right."
[Applause.] The task in either case is to be performed by the merchants
of New York, who have the power to do it and only need resolve that they
will.

I congratulate you, gentlemen, on the continued attractions of the
annual entertainment you offer us; above all, I congratulate you on
having given us the great pleasure of meeting once more and seeing
seated together at your table the first four citizens of the metropolis
of the Empire State: Charles O'Conor, Peter Cooper, William Cullen
Bryant, and John A. Dix. I thank you for the courtesy of your
remembrance of the Press; and so to one and all, good-night. [Applause.]

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