trol;
my object is to point out the effect of this despotism upon society, and
to show how injurious it is in every way to the cause of morality and
virtue.

Of course, the newspaper press is the most mischievous, in consequence
of its daily circulation, the violence of political animosity, and the
want of respectability in a large proportion of the editors. The number
of papers published and circulated in Great Britain, among a population
of twenty-six millions, is calculated at about three hundred and
seventy. The number published in the United States, among thirteen
millions, are supposed to vary between _nine and ten thousand_. Now the
value of newspapers may be fairly calculated by the capital expended
upon them; and not only is not one-quarter of the sum expended in
England, upon three hundred and seventy newspapers, expended upon the
nine or ten thousand in America; but I really believe that the expense
of the `_Times_' newspaper alone, is equal to at least five _thousand_
of the _minor_ papers in the United States, which are edited by people
of no literary pretension, and at an expense so trifling as would appear
to us not only ridiculous, but impossible. As to the capabilities of
the majority of the editors, let the Americans speak for themselves.

"Every wretch who can write an English paragraph (and many who cannot,)
every pettifogger without practice, every one whose poverty or crimes
have just left him cash or credit enough to procure a press and types,
sets up a newspaper."

Again--"If you be puzzled what to do with your son, if he be a born
dunce, if reading and writing be all the accomplishments he can acquire,
if he be horribly ignorant and depraved, if he be indolent and an
incorrigible liar, lost to all shame and decency, and incurably
dishonest, make a newspaper editor of him. Look around you, and see a
thousand successful proofs that no excellence or acquirement, moral or
intellectual, is requisite to conduct a press. The more defective an
editor is, the better he succeeds. We could give a thousand
instances."--_Boston News_.

These are the assertions of the Americans, not my own; that in many
instances they are true, I have no doubt. In a country so chequered as
the United States, such must be expected; but I can also assert, that
there are many very highly respectable and clever editors in the United
States. The New York papers are most of them very well conducted, and
very well writ