Gentlemen, the press is a mild-spoken and truly modest institution which never chants its own praises.  Unlike Walt Whitman, it never celebrates itself.  Even if it did become me—­one of the youngest of its conductors in New York—­to undertake at this late hour to inflict upon you its eulogy, there are two circumstances which might well make me pause.  It is an absurdity for me—­an absurdity, indeed, for any of us—­to assume to speak for the press of New York at a table where William Cullen Bryant sits silent.  Besides, I have been reminded since I came here, by Dr. Chapin, that the pithiest eulogy ever pronounced upon the first editor of America, was pronounced in this very room and from that very platform by the man who at that time was the first of living editors in this country, when he said that he honored the memory of Benjamin Franklin because he was a journeyman printer who did not drink, a philosopher who wrote common sense, and an office-holder who did not steal. [Applause.]

One word only of any seriousness about your toast; it says:  “The Press—­right or wrong; when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set right.”  Gentlemen, this is your affair.  A stream will not rise higher than its fountain.  The Hudson River will not flow backward over the Adirondacks.  The press of New York is fed and sustained by the commerce of New York, and the press of New York to-day, bad as it is in many respects—­and I take my full share of the blame it fairly deserves—­is just what the merchants of New York choose to have it.  If you want it better, you can make it better.  So long as you are satisfied with it as it is, sustain it as it is, take it into your families and into your counting-rooms as it is, and encourage it as it is, it will remain what it is.

If, for instance, the venerable leader of your Bar, conspicuous through a long life for the practice of every virtue that adorns his profession and his race, is met on his return from the very jaws of the grave, as he re-enters the Court-room to undertake again the gratuitous championship of your cause against thieves who robbed you, with the slander that he is himself a thief of the meanest kind, a robber of defenceless women—­I say if such a man is subject to persistent repetition of such a calumny in the very city he has honored and served, and at the very end and crown of his life, it is because you do not choose to object to it and make your objection felt.  A score of similar instances will readily occur to anyone who runs over in his memory the course of our municipal history for the last dozen years, but there is no time to repeat or even to refer to them here.

And so, Mr. President, because this throng of gentlemen, gathered about the doors, pay me the too great compliment by remaining standing to listen when they have started to go home—­let me come back to the text you gave me, and the sentiment with which we began:  “The Press—­right or wrong; when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set right.” [Applause.] The task in either case is to be performed by the merchants of New York, who have the power to do it and only need resolve that they will.