as plied in the treacherous turning round on nation, is the last thing thought of. But their associates. There is, happily for passing this, we come to the Chesterfield the virtuous, no confidence, no friendship language, wherewith the 'Courier and Enin crime. Thus, in the case before us, it quirer' would repudiate (it is a good Amehas been sought to make the New York rican word, that !) his worthy associate. Herald' the sole luckless scapegoat. "It' is notorious," says the Journal of Com- "The great burthen of this Review, is to fix merce,' "that the Herald' was establish-upon the Press of the United States, the folly, ed among us after the model of the London the obscenity, the recklessness, and the vulgarity of the New York Herald;' a paper for which, 'Westminster': press." [Oh! excellent well knows, the American people enreviewer, what a prize you will be to your tertain no other sentiment than unmitigated disworthy associates!] "And now they gust, and which happens to be edited by a band have the impudence to come out and dis- of foreigners, who were actually his boon com own their own bantling. We have fre- panions, and co-labourers on some of the most quently thought," adds this cautious and scurrilous of the London papers.” (!!!) considerate journal, "that the influence of that violent and abusive paper amongst us was exaggerated: that is, supposing it was not full of obscenities, for which unhappily readers may be found everywhere." In other words, the repudiation might run thus: Our violent and abusive associate would really, after all, get no more by his violence aud abuse than we do; but he is so peculiarly admirable in the obscene line, which everybody is unhappily inclin ed to, that there, we must admit, he carries the day. We sympathize with the journalist of Commerce in his confessed inability, that way, to compete with his more successful rival, and we will add to his credit, that we cannot say we have ever observed him even make the attempt. Indeed this Journal of Commerce' is on the whole a very dull, and (as far as anything of the genus 'newspaper' can be in America) a very harmless journal-one, for example, as it naïvely confessed on the 10th of January last, who "cannot see theCourier's' wit in telling OUTRAGEOUS LIES directly in the face of public knowledge" and we should not have made further mention of it, if it had not fallen into this fit of anger against ourselves. But now for the wIT of the Courier.' The allusion is to the distinguished writer on whom, for purposes before described, the authorship of our Review has been attempted to be fastened; and on whom, we are very well aware—though, as with the former article, he will not have known what we are now writing, will not have been consulted respecting it, will not have seen a word of it till it is made public to all the world--the ruffianly libeller and his friends will seek to fix the responsibility of the present article also. Equally, and as wilfully, does he mistake the 'great burthen' of that Review of October. It was to fix upon the press of the United States, in companionship with like qualities of the New York Herald,' the folly, the obscenity, the recklessness, and the vulgarity, of the New York Courier and Enquirer.' He knows this, and he knows that we have done it. We have pilloried him here in England. He tries to escape, and it is the dreary impotence of this very effort which fixes upon his name more deeply and irrevocably the folly, the ob scenity, the recklessness, and the vulgarity.' He makes dismal efforts to be facetious;-talks with frantic outrage of the writer who is supposed to have placed him He cries out, too, of course, and in far in his pillory, as one "who for more than louder tone, the precious Tu Quoque' arhalf his life has lived in the stews of Longument. Pooh!' exclaims the wit, in his don, and eaten his daily bread at cold witleast indecent mood and phrase, the tal' shops supplied from the refuse garbage American press compared with the Eng- of hotels and the tables of gentlemen ;”—and lish, is as a Chesterfield to a Cobbett!' in fancy hears himself, across all that wide The argument is become natural to large Atlantic, only the more loudly greeted classes in America. You have it used on with every occasion. Charge them with dishonesty in their dealings, and they offer to find you dealers quite as dishonest; charge them with national degradation or dishonour, and they look round for a na- we observe almost the precise argument of the text tion in a like predicament. To reform put by the Spectator' (March 25th), in remarks their dealings, or to strive to amend their upon a statement of the New York American.' ་ ( The dismal, universal hiss, the sound As these sheets are passing through the press, How we should feel for the 'Westminster | the President. It was owing to this that Review' with such a creature as this to the paper gained such a circulation over defend! How yet more deeply should we the United States. An attempt of the sympathize with such a man as the intelli- Scotch vagabond who owns the 'Herald' to gent "New York Merchant," who is cheat him of several hundred dollars, led obliged to think the Courier and En- to a separation." In answer to this, the quirer' decidedly one of the best papers editor of the 'Herald' undertakes to prove published in New York, although that does Mr. Parmelee a self-convicted liar; and, not say much, he mournfully confesses.' it may be said, he quite succeeds. He But we are to believe-no other senti- prints a number of his letters, professing ment than unmitigated disgust is enter- eternal gratitude and friendship, and thus tained in America for the 'Courier's' asso- delineates Mr. P.'s general literary career. ciate, convicted like himself and like him- Out of pure pity, he says, as he had acted self under punishment, the New York to many other scoundrels' (the phrase Herald!' It is unmitigated disgust which happily expresses the only class which has given the Herald' upwards of thirty such a man ever pities or employs), he had thousand subscribers! It is unmitigated taken him into his service. "I soon found, disgust which so strengthens it that it rears however, that he was of little use as a reits impudent head above the law, and runs porter, and too lazy for any purpose, exits career of reckless villany, unbridled cept loafing at taverns, or playing billiards and triumphant! It is unmitigated disgust with jackasses. I continued him, but on the part of the American people, that found him totally useless, deceptive, renders it worth the while of the Chief impudent, presuming, and extravagant. Magistrate who hopes for his re-election Hence his drafts for money. I refused to at the hands of that people, to incur the fork over more money, after his numerous active hatred of a majority in the Senate, deceptions practised both on President and the contempt and distrust of (let us Tyler and myself. I then dismissed him, hope) large classes of educated men, by and am sorry to find that the President STILL openly connecting his government with continues to employ him in the Treasury this New York Herald, by taking under department. If the President has any rehis protection the wretched slanderers in gard for his reputation, he ought to dismiss its pay, and by rewarding their zeal for him instantly." Little may be added to himself by secret agencies' in the ser- this graceful picture, but if it could receive vice of the state! Will even the West- another effective touch, it has it in the minster Reviewer be able to believe that? following letter. It is a part of the private The first part of this description of an correspondence of Mr. Parmelee with his influence so horrible, we proved in our friend, the editor of the New York Heformer review the last we shall now pro- rald.' ceed to prove. When rogues (we grieve to have to draw so many illustrations from "Washington, Friday evening.-Dear Sir,this special walk of life, but the subject The White House is the mansion of the PresiI have just returned from the White House. will be our excuse)-when rogues, we say, dent of the United States.] As for myself, I fall out, honest men are apt to get their cannot have an office worth taking, for the senown. A month or two since, this hap-ate would not confirm me under any circumpened with two of the most notorious rogues of the 'Herald:' the chief devil' himself, and the fiendish representative (a person of the name of Parmelee) he had stationed at Washington. The difference, which dates within the last month or six weeks, first appeared in an attack upon the rogue in chief, in one of the Herald's' The difficulty seems to have been solved rivals. This was clearly from the pen of at last by appointment to a secret agency Mr. Parmelee, who having just been dis- on the frontier,' in happy defiance of those placed from his honourable post at Wash- Clay senators, whose hatred to the 'Herington, took occasion to describe his suc- ald, since it implied no hatred to the cessor as 'Attree, the notorious vagabond.' 'Courier and Enquirer,' we must be ex"It is very curious," he proceeded, "to cused if we decline to attribute to any notice how very differently the Herald' exclusively lofty feeling. is looked upon since Parmelee left it. It was, before, a sort of semi-official organ of stances. The Clay senators all hate me more T. H. PARMELEE." It will not do, after this, to speak of the Herald,' but as the most popular and largely circulated journal in America. It the good fortune of some hundreds, repreis popular in the proportion of its infamy senting the good old hearty English feeland indecency. It is accounted clever, ing, to find at that instant one of them only because frightfully reckless of all mo- self-placed within their reach. We can ral restraints: a recklessness most effect- punish him, at any rate, they said: and ive in that condition of society. Have how they did it, is little likely ever to be no money dealings with my father, for, forgotten in the annals of scandalous Engdotard as he is, he will make an ass of lish newspapers. you.' What money gives to the miser, But the absence of mere personal scan. the utterly reckless man, no matter how dal does not necessarily imply the good imbecile and ignorant, is endowed with conduct of a journal in other important by the party passion of America. It gives respects. We admit this. It is our charge him what stands in the stead of intellect, against a vast many American papers, that of honesty, and virtue. The extraordinary have no specially libellous vocation. We influence of a great English advocate used must also admit, then, that England can to be explained by the remark, that there this way sin as well. As in the other case, were twelve Scarletts in the witness-box. however, the instances are only two, and We cannot explain the hundred thousand to be found in that part of the press which readers of the New York Herald,' ex- is published weekly; but the circulation is cept on the supposition of a hundred thou- larger, and in one of these instances, is sand Bennetts in America. said to exceed thirty thousand. Thirty We have never denied that we have an thousand pot-houses ring all the more infamous press in England: we put that noisily for this one day in the week; fact forward in the very front of our first things that should be reverenced and reexposure of the literary delinquencies of spected, are made the subject of vulgar America, and we do not desire that it abuse; there is violence, exaggeration, should be lost sight of. It marks, in a and intemperance-all great evils. But manner too striking and salutary, the dif- were the evils fifty times as great, they ference in the moral and social condition act within a limited sphere, and cannot of the countries. That infamous press, penetrate beyond. There they exhaust we cannot too often repeat, is limited to their fury and their mischief. In such a two newspapers, published weekly, and in country as ours, where every class (excirculation, as in every other respect, the cept, we grieve to say, the lowest labourlowest of their contemporaries. Position, ing class, to whose condition, God be they have none; influence, except with thanked, men's minds are at last awakenthose of whose bad conscience, or coward- ing) are to some certain extent protected ice, they make a market, none. Any one against every other class, and have each, who pretended to talk of their political in a greater or less degree, their special import, would be laughed at. The real bulwark of shelter from the gross or false English people have no concern with pretensions of the rest-even the very them, any more than with the gambling worst shape which these opposed and coun houses or other scenes of vice in this most teracting influences can assume, has its crowded metropolis of the world; or than lurking principle of safety. Their most with the so-called fashionable men who evil and most vicious element dashes itresort to them, and in whom these libel- self against the general structure of socielous papers find their readers and their ty in vain. friends. It happened, not many weeks But what is the case in America? There since, that one of them, through its chief is a recent expression in much abuse, and conductor and proprietor, indiscreetly which promises to become fashionable for placed itself within reach of the healthy all kinds of purposes, the tyranny of the classes of our people in one of their places majority. For ourselves we do not in the of public entertainment, when the man, abstract discover anything so very frightthough what he then proposed was harm- ful in what it expresses. If there is to be a less enough, and might possibly have had tyranny of any kind, this seems on the some merit of its own, was ignominiously whole to put forth the greatest amount of driven out of the public sight, with vehe- just pretension. The misery of it is, in the ment contempt and execration. It was, present state of the republic, that it is a on the very same evening, matter of sad tyranny altogether unexampled in former and pompous complaint in the House of times and governments, because utterly Lords, that the law could not effectively without the least control. If we are asked reach these libellers; when it thus fell to whether we suppose it possible to check the further advances of the democratic | by this press, when the Herald' appeared, tendency in the United States, we answer the republic was already afflicted with no, but that most possible and practical that Spirit of Party which is too nearly alwould it be, by a very different course lied to the Spirit of Licentiousness to be from that which is now pursued, to guide, able to check its career. Pari passu with to elevate, to redeem it, to conduct it to a the other has it since continued, giving noble and enduring destiny. As it is, and taking nourishment from the same everything swells the forces of society in polluted source, till we see its hideous one direction, against which not a single consummation in such a paper as the effective stand is made in any one quar-largely circulated and influential Courier ter. In this state of things the 'New and Enquirer,' and have to grieve over its York Herald' made its appearance some deplorable excesses in even such able, eight or nine years ago, and found society respectable, and well conducted, not though thoroughly prepared for its career of infa- for that reason, widely popular journals, mous success. In one immense division, as the New York American,' the 'Boston utter recklessness; in the other, where Daily Advertiser,' the New York Evensafety lay, utter indifference. And what a ing Post,' and some few others. Here, lesson for some present resistance against therefore, was the safety of the 'Herald.' dangers still to come, is embodied in the Even the honestest men of the opposite past course and influence of this terrible parties were too hotly engaged in tearing foe to decency and order! All those vices each other to pieces, to bethink them how of the republic which should have been far better it had been to make common gradually wearing away-the prying, in- cause against the dishonest and infamous, quisitive, unwholesome growth, of a young the enemy of all. So-uninterfered with and prematurely forced society-have been-went on the 'Herald,' till it has reached pampered and bloated to increased enor- its daily circulation of upwards of thirty mity. For as nothing breeds so rapidly as thousand till it can boast of the favours vermin, the Herald brood, within this of the Chief Magistrate of the Republic: brief space of years, has almost covered till it forces its vagabond agents and tools the land. We are told, and we can well into the public service: till, in a word, it believe it, that the 'Herald' has imitators has become A Power in the state. It is of and worthy disciples in very nearly every small village, town, or city in America. It seems at first incredible that no strong effort should have been made to resist all this, but a little reflection explains the cause. as little use fuming about this, as to deny, in the matter of slavery, the degradation and depression of America below every other civilized country in the world. Let them fume as they will, the thing is so, and until they do something better and The existing press of America had itself more practical, so it will continue. The effectively brought the curse upon the President of America is not a dolt or a land, of which the 'foreign' adventurer madman, and would hardly place himself (for Scotland voided him over the Atlan- in such relations with the New York tic) who started the 'Herald' simply took Herald' without a sufficient reason. His advantage. This was the press which, present position has a tendency to sharpen before the birth of the 'Herald,' Governor the wits, and to show him where profit lies. Clinton had denounced in terms we quoted We take his authority to be therefore, that in our former Review, and of which, some in this paper-this wicked, cold-blooded years earlier, Jefferson expressed a strong representative, not so much of any special conviction in his correspondence, that had party, as of the reckless, outrageous, liits intemperance and calumnies been centious, and abominable qualities, of known in the time of Washington, they which all party is now composed-he sees would have driven that great man from his best protection in the long run against public life. This was the press of which, the storms which threaten him. when Captain Hamilton was in America, But we have promised in this Review to that acute observer made it his business describe the Answer' we have received, to read specimens from all parts of the and it is time to introduce the flattering Union,' and pronounced it as his opinion reception which was given to our article that they were so contemptible in talent, of October by the journal, whose characand in abuse so horribly outrageous, as to ter, as we hope, we have now thoroughly disgust him far more with the people who explained: the New York Daily Herald.' could endure them, than with the writers It is illustrative of much that we have of who had produced them. And, we repeat, fered to the reader's consideration, and 4. "This Review is the first gun in the long war that has at last broken out in the litera may also very possibly lead him to sup- of personal spite." "Dictated by the aristocratic pose that beneath all the tone of reckless circles." bullying it exhibits, beneath all its boasted self-glorification in disgrace and shame, ture of America and that of Europe, for the em there is ill-concealed fear, trembling which pire of the human mind in both hemispheres. (!!) will have way, pain which puts on sorry It is one of the most savage and barbarous tirades grimace, and the bitter sense that, liber- that ever disgraced the literature of any country. tine jack-pudding as it still may attempt to It is falsehood-fury-mi-representation-mis show itself, our Review has placed a noose quotation-violence-vulgarity-heartlessnessaround its neck, which it would only ask one distinguishes the literary works of coarseness-and all that low species of tact which — already spirited demonstration of the decency and before the public. ... We consider this singu intelligence of America, to tighten effec- lar Review as a step in the general revolution in tually, at once, and for ever. literature, politics, government, liberty, and right, which the press of this country have begun, and which is destined to overrun all the existing institutions of Europe at no distant day, and to create in their stead republican government, republican literature, and republican philosophy!! At our leisure we shall review the Review, and make drink to the very dregs the very But we reserve any further remark till we have printed the extracts. Though we have abridged even those we quote (never to the omission of a syllable that looks in the remotest degree like answer or defence), and omitted some dozen times the number with which we might, if in-cup he has mixed for others to take." clined to so sorry a work, fill more than 5. "We understand that a literary gentleman another number of our Review,' they will yet, in all probability, be much too numerous for the reader's liking. He must bear with us, for the purpose we have in view. The truth is, that since the 'Foreign Quarterly' of last October reached the United States, scarcely a day has passed in which it has not furnished a leading topic of outrageous abuse to the 'Herald' and its associates throughout the country. What we now give are all taken from the most prominent leaders of the Coryphæus of the herd. All of them date on separate days, and not a syllable more is quoted at any time, than may serve as a sample of the rest. 1. "This extraordinary Review is, without exception, one of the most savage articles on a literary subject, that ever appeared in a British journal; and may be considered as the manifesto, or declaration of war, of the London literati, against that portion of the newspaper press of America who oppose the Copyright law, and refuse to acknowledge the supremacy of English literature and English genius." of distinguished reputation is now engaged in writing a reply to the Review on American Newspaper Literature, written by, and first This gentleman is intimately acquainted with appearing in the Foreign Quarterly Review.' the British, French, and American newspaper press. He will show the different characteris tics of each, and prove beyond contradiction, that American newspaper literature is the most origi nal that ever appeared in the history of civilisa in such proportions and quantities, as will protion that it unites philosophy, poetry, and wit, duce one of the most remarkable intellectual and literary revolutions that ever blessed the world.. This review of the Review will be issued in a few days, in an extra' Literary Herlished: one-half of which will be sent to England ald,' and an edition of 50,000 copies will be pub and France. The literary war has now begun between the Old and the New World, and it must go on!" the 6. "DID — WRITE THE REVIEW?-Several papers have undertaken to throw a doubt on this question. In the first place, Doctor —English correspondent of Noah's paper, says the authorship is universally attributed to and that such is the impression in London. Secondly, several persons who have recently arrived here from England, say that it was gen2. "This remarkable Review contains twenty-erally talked about in the literary circles there, six octavo pages, or seven columns of minion mat- that some such review, written by, was ter, written with all the force and originality of shortly to appear. Again, several private letters genuine blackguardism. . . . The papers cut up have been received by gentlemen in this city, in this savage article are the Herald' and from in which he speaks of the news'Courier and Enquirer;' and the style in which papers of the United States in exactly the same they are treated is a caution to the Mohawks.... strain as the review in question does, &c. &c. The Weekly Herald' of this day, price only 6d., We could state the names, but But will contain this wonderful article at length, and even admitting — was not the author, it is next week we shall enter upon an analysis of its quite certain that he had a hand in it, and probaviews, facts, falsehoods, assertions, and pur- bly under the direction of the celebrated clique poses. Aristocrats and monopolists have who sent him out here (!) This clique consisted dictated to the writer. . . The war is now of those who signed the famous letter on the begun, and 'd-d be he that first cries Hold, Copyright Law, which was published in the enough.' 'Evening Post' before left here. And taking this view of the matter, it would then "Vein prove that this review is the result of a con 3. "Shockingly false reasoning, apparently founded on the grossest misinformation. |