68 Colleges and Public Life 



is a source of great harm to the nation; and where 

 ignorant or prejudiced critics are themselves edu- 

 cated men, their attitude does real harm also to 

 the class to which they belong. 



The tone of a portion of the press of the country 

 toward public men, and especially toward political 

 opponents, is degrading, all forms of coarse and 

 noisy slander being apparently considered legitimate 

 weapons to employ against men of the opposite 

 party or faction. Unfortunately, not a few of the 

 journals that pride themselves upon being inde- 

 pendent in politics, and the organs of cultivated 

 men, betray the same characteristics in a less coarse 

 but quite as noxious form. All these journals do 

 great harm by accustoming good citizens to see 

 their public men, good and bad, assailed indis- 

 criminately as scoundrels. The effect is twofold : 

 the citizen learning, on the one hand, to disbelieve 

 any statement he sees in any newspaper, so that the 

 attacks on evil lose their edge; and on the other, 

 gradually acquiring a deep-rooted belief that all 

 public men are more or less bad. In consequence, 

 his political instinct becomes hopelessly blurred, and 

 he grows unable to tell 1 the good representative from 

 the bad. The worst offence that can be committed 

 against the Republic is the offence of the public man 

 who betrays his trust; but second only to it comes 

 the offence of the man who tries to persuade others 

 that an honest and efficient public man is dishonest 

 or unworthy. This is a wrong that can be com- 

 mitted in a great many different ways. Downright 



