Vl ON THE MORAL POWER OF THE PRESS. 



This estimate does not exceed reality. The general course of 

 daily experience proves it is no more than the expression of a 

 sincere conviction, in agreement with public opinion. In all 

 orders and degrees of men, we find some of the ablest individuals 

 writing, printing, and publishing, to promote the interests of 

 their own particular station, art, or employment. We see each, 

 with a centripetal force, resorting to the same engine as an 

 universal means of accomplishing their proposed object. How- 

 ever different in pursuit, theory, or practical usage, they all agree 

 in one point, of bringing the press to bear on the main obstacles 

 to their progress. They launch this intellectual thunder with 

 the same confidence that an experienced general batters the 

 strongest fortifications of his enemy, with his most powerful 

 ordnance. 



It is not necessary to illustrate these observations by particular 

 instances in the practice of the numerous Societies long existing 

 in the old and new world, for the promotion of learning and the 

 sciences, by means of the press. There are two, whose recent 

 establishment in London, forms a memorable era in the British 

 annals. Each includes a valuable portion of the high rank and 

 dignity, the talent, property, wisdom, and public and private 

 virtue of the united kingdom. If there are some shades of dif- 

 ference in their systems, that discrepancy places in a stronger 

 light their separate agreement in opinion, that their arduous and 

 comprehensive object can only be effected by the same means, 

 that is, by entering into an offensive and defensive alliance with 

 the press. Their sublime aim, to dispel the mists of ignorance 

 and error, to teach men their true interests, and to make the 

 millions of this great kingdom as one in Christian charity and 

 useful knowledge, called for an almost omnipotent organ. They 

 have put that organ into weekly requisition, and have already 

 worked a great change for the better in various orders of the 

 population. Numbers, who, heretofore, stumbled in the darkness 

 of prejudice, now walk in the light of truth. The act of their 

 formation, and the efforts of these two inestimable Societies 

 must have arisen from a conviction that the useful capabilities of 

 the press had not been sufficiently exerted before; and that its 

 powers were still more available for the common-weal to an extent 

 beyond immediate Calculation. 



From a similar conviction of its sovereign efficacy to contribute 

 to the same noble end, the press has been, for some time, 

 employed by the Society of Friends, a class of straight- forward 

 men, whose unblemished integrity, vigilant industry, and habits 

 of order and regularity, afford a living example, wherever they 

 are established. Long distinguished for the good sense and 

 certainty, with which, when having any object in view, they 

 proportion the means to the end, they liave contributed a fund 

 for printing and gratuitously distributing moral tracts to lessen 

 the amount of social evil and promote the practice of Christian 



