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of common justice, a hereditary nobility; and diligently divert it from
the fact that the one damns him if he doesn't wear its collar, and robs
him under the gentle name of taxation whether he wears it or not, and the
other gets all the honors while he does all the work.
The essayist thought that Mr. Arnold, with his trained eye and
intelligent observation, ought to have perceived that the very quality
which he so regretfully missed from our press--respectfulness, reverence
--was exactly the thing which would make our press useless to us if it
had it--rob it of the very thing which differentiates it from all other
journalism in the world and makes it distinctively and preciously
American, its frank and cheerful irreverence being by all odds the most
valuable of all its qualities. "For its mission--overlooked by Mr.
Arnold--is to stand guard over a nation's liberties, not its humbugs and
shams." He thought that if during fifty years the institutions of the
old world could be exposed to the fire of a flouting and scoffing press
like ours, "monarchy and its attendant crimes would disappear from
Christendom." Monarchists might doubt this; then "why not persuade the
Czar to give it a trial in Russia?" Concluding, he said:
Well, the charge is, that our press has but little of that old world
quality, reverence. Let us be candidly grateful that it is so. With its
limited reverence it at least reveres the things which this nation
reveres, as a rule, and that is sufficient: what other people revere is
fairly and properly matter of light importance to us. Our press does not
reverence kings, it does not reverence so called nobilities, it does not
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