How sympathetic are the countless brood of falsehoods
respecting our country in foreign publications is evident from the
cases, too few, of periodicals which, with the same means of
information, rise to a noble accuracy and justice. While the more
virulent, like the "Saturday Review," servile to its peculiar customers,
make a show of holding out against the ever more manifest truth, others,
among which is even the "Times" itself, learn the prudence of an altered
style. When the wind is about to change, an uncertain fluttering and
swinging to and fro may be observed in the vanes. So do many organs
prove what pure indicators they are, as they shake in the breeze of
public opinion. "Stop my paper" is a cry whose real meaning is for the
constituency which the paper represents.
It is a more shameful illustration of the same weakness, when the pens
of literary men, not dependent on local support, are subsidized by the
prejudice or sold to the pride and wealth of the society in which they
live. "I believe in testifying," once said a great man; and we have,
among the philosophic and learned, noble witnesses for the equity of our
national case.
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