rvasive that
journalists were content to denounce or to extol, and seldom subjected
the character of men or measures to a searching and impartial
examination. There was too much sentimentalism in politics, with too
little reference of current questions to underlying principles, too
little effort to get down to what Americans call the "hard pan" of
facts. In all these respects the last forty years have witnessed
prodigious advances; and, so far as the press is concerned--for much
has been due to the Universities and to the growth of a literary
class--Mr. Godkin's writings largely contributed to the progress made.
His finished criticism, his exact method, his incisive handling of
economic problems, his complete detachment from party, helped to form
a new school of journalists, as the example he set of a serious and
lofty conception of an editor's duties helped to add dignity to the
position. He had not that disposition to enthrone the press which made
a great English newspaper once claim for itself that it discharged in
the modern world the functions of the mediaeval Church. But he brought
to his work as an anonymous writer a sense of responsibility and a
zeal for the welfare of his country which no minister of State could
have surpassed.

His friends may sometimes have wished that he had more fully
recognised the worth of sentiment as a motive power in politics, that
he had more frequently tried to persuade as well as to convince, that
he had given more credit for partial instalments of honest service and
for a virtue less than perfect, that he had dealt more leniently with
the faults of the good and the follies of the wise. Defects in these
respects were the almost inevitable defects of his admirable
qualities, of his passion for truth, his hatred of wrong and
injustice, his clear vision, his indomitable spirit.

The lesson of his editorial career is a lesson not for America only.
Among the dangers that beset democratic communities, none are greater
than the efforts of wealth to control, not only electors and
legislators, but also the organs of public opinion, and the
disposition of statesmen and journalists to defer to and flatter the
majority, adopting the sentiment dominant at the moment, and telling
the people that its voice is the voice of God. Mr. Godkin was not
only inaccessible to the lures of wealth--the same may happily be
still said of many of his craft-brethren--he was just as little
accessible to the fea