e attributes of power and
wisdom combined; it fosters and protects science, industry, and art; it
is the patron of all useful inventions; it is the preserver of the
state, and everything that gives strength and prosperity to the state;
it is the champion of law, justice, and order, and extends its
protecting aegis over the weak, the downtrodden, and the oppressed. It
has taken two centuries, as we have already said, to make the press what
it is; and a terrible uphill fight has it had to wage. Tyranny,
dogmatism, and intolerance in high places, and ignorance and
superstition in low, have ever been its sworn enemies. It has had its
saints and martyrs, more worthy of canonization in men's hearts than
many written high in the calendar of Rome. But though persecuted,
crushed, and at times apparently done to death, its vitality was
indestructible, and after every knock-down blow it rose again from the
earth, like Antaeus, with renewed strength. It was always a vigorous
stripling, and even so far back as the days of David Hume its future
greatness and magnificent destiny was clearly marked out, so that he
wrote: 'Its liberties and the liberties of the people must stand or fall
together.' Liberty and the press in England are convertible terms, and
this is the true reason of the success and power it enjoys. It is also
the cause of the persecutions it has had to undergo. Tyranny and the
press are as necessarily opposed to each other as are the principles of
good and evil. The word 'tyranny' is not here intended to refer only to
the despotic rulers of states and kingdoms, but to include the
oppression practiced by the strong upon the weak, the rich upon the
poor, the great upon the small, whether nations or individuals. The
press, moreover, is the guardian of social, political, and religious
morality. The greatest as well as the most trifling affairs which
conduce to the well-being and comfort of the multitude are eagerly
canvassed. The faults and vices which disfigure and disgrace even the
most advanced forms of civilization are unshrinkingly laid bare, and the
proper remedies prescribed. The political conduct of nations and of
public men is carefully scrutinized, and every false step that they may
make is immediately noted, commented upon, and held up to public
reprobation. Religious questions, although, ever since the world began,
they have been approached in a very different spirit to those of any
other description, and have be