to appear, it was a public benefit to have it given, Herald-fashion, with all its revolting particulars.  What a punishment to the guilty! what a lesson to the innocent! what a warning to the undetected!  How much beneficial reflection and conversation it excited!  How necessary, in an age of sensation morals and free-love theories, to have self-indulgence occasionally exhibited in all its hideous nastiness, and without any of its fleeting, deceptive, imaginary charms!  The instantaneous detection of the Otero murderers last autumn, and of the robbers of Adams’s express-car last winter, as related in the daily papers, and the picture presented by them of young Ketchum seated at work in the shoe-shop of Sing-Sing Prison, were equivalent to the addition of a thousand men to the police force.  Herein lies the power of such a slight person as the editor of the Herald.  It is not merely that he impudently pulls your nose, but he pulls it in the view of a million people.

Nor less potent is publicity as a means of reward.  How many brave hearts during the late war felt themselves far more than repaid for all their hardships in the field and their agony in the hospital by reading their names in despatches, or merely in the list of wounded, and thinking of the breakfast-tables far away at which that name had been spied out and read with mingled exultation and pity.  “Those who love me know that I did my duty,—­it is enough.”

Our whole observation of the daily press convinces us that its power to do good arises chiefly from its giving the news of the day; and its power to do harm chiefly from its opportunity to comment upon the news.  Viewed only as a vehicle of intelligence, the Herald has taught the journalists of the United States the greater part of all that they yet know of their profession; regarded as an organ of opinion, it has done all that it was ever possible for a newspaper to do in perverting public opinion, debauching public taste, offending public morals, and dishonoring the national character.

The question arises, Why has not this paper been long ago outdone in giving the news?  It has always been possible to suppress it by surpassing it.  Its errors have given its rivals an immense advantage over it; for it has always prospered, not in consequence of its badness, but of its goodness.  We are acquainted with two foolish young patriots who were wrought up to such a frenzy of disgust by its traitorous course during the first half of our late war, that they seriously considered whether there was any way in which they could so well serve their country in its time of need, as by slaying that pernicious and insolent editor; but both of those amiable lunatics were compelled occasionally to buy the paper.  Of late, too, we have seen vast audiences break forth into wild hootings at the mention of its name; but not the less did the hooters buy it the next morning.  Nevertheless, as soon as there exists a paper which to the Herald’s good points adds the other features of a complete newspaper, and avoids its faults, from that hour the Herald wanes and falls speedily to the second rank.