that is fettered? Can the people look for truths to partial sources,
whether rendered partial through fear or through favor? Why shall not a
manacled press be trusted with the maintenance and defence of popular
rights? Because it is supposed to be under the influence of a power
which may prove greater than the love of truth. Such a press may screen
abuses in government, or be silent. It may fear to speak. And may it not
fear to speak, too, when its conductors, if they speak in any but one
way, may lose their means of livelihood? Is dependence on government for
bread no temptation to screen its abuses? Will the press always speak
the truth, when the truth, if spoken, may be the means of silencing it
for the future? Is the truth in no danger, is the watchman under no
temptation, when he can neither proclaim the approach of national evils,
nor seem to descry them, without the loss of his place?

Mr. President, an open attempt to secure the aid and friendship of the
public press, by bestowing the emoluments of office on its active
conductors, seems to me, of every thing we have witnessed, to be the
most reprehensible. It degrades both the government and the press. As
far as its natural effect extends, it turns the palladium of liberty
into an engine of party. It brings the agency, activity, energy, and
patronage of government all to bear, with united force, on the means of
general intelligence, and on the adoption or rejection of political
opinions. It so completely perverts the true object of government, it so
entirely revolutionizes our whole system, that the chief business of
those in power is directed rather to the propagation of opinions
favorable to themselves, than to the execution of the laws. This
propagation of opinions, through the press, becomes the main
administrative duty. Some fifty or sixty editors of leading journals
have been appointed to office by the present executive. A stand has been
made against this proceeding, in the Senate, with partial success; but,
by means of appointments which do not come before the Senate, or other
means, the number has been carried to the extent I have mentioned.
Certainly, Sir, the editors of the public journals are not to be
disfranchised. Certainly they are fair candidates, either for popular
elections, or a just participation in office. Certainly they reckon in
their number some of the first geniuses, the best scholars, and the most
honest and well-principled men in the co