pression under which they laboured, until
this stranger came amongst them to enlighten their understandings. Nor
was it less wonderful how many sources of wrong he exposed, that no one
had ever dreamed of having an existence. Although there was not a tax of
any sort laid in the colony, not a shilling ever collected in the way of
import duties, he boldly pronounced the citizens of the islands to be
the most overburthened people in Christendom! The taxation of England
was nothing to it, and he did not hesitate to proclaim a general
bankruptcy as the consequence, unless some of his own expedients were
resorted to, in order to arrest the evil. Our limits will not admit of a
description of the process by which this person demonstrated that a
people who literally contributed nothing at all, were overtaxed; but any
one who has paid attention to the opposing sides of a discussion on such
a subject, can readily imagine how easily such an apparent contradiction
can be reconciled, and the proposition demonstrated.

In the age of which we are writing, a majority of man kind fancied that
a statement made in print was far more likely to be true than one made
orally. Then he who stood up in his proper person and uttered his facts
on the responsibility of his personal character, was far less likely to
gain credit than the anonymous scribbler, who recorded his lie on paper,
though he made his record behind a screen, and half the time as much
without personal identity as he would be found to be without personal
character, were he actually seen and recognised. In our time, the press
has pretty effectually cured all observant persons at least of giving
faith to a statement merely because it is in print, and has become so
far alive to its own great inferiority as publicly to talk of
conventions to purify itself, and otherwise to do something to regain
its credit; but such was not the fact, even in America, forty years
since. The theory of an unrestrained press has fully developed itself
within the last quarter of a century, so that even the elderly ladies,
who once said with marvellous unction, "It must be true, for it's in
print," are now very apt to say, "Oh! it's only a newspaper _account_!"
The foulest pool has been furnished by a beneficent Providence with the
means of cleansing its own waters.

But the "Crater Truth-Teller" could utter its lies, as a privileged
publication, at the period of this narrative. Types still had a
sanctity;