148 Progress of Population and Wealth 



foundations of civil society, or seriously affect the public peace. 

 Yet the influence of the ministers over their respective followers is 

 rather enhanced than diminished by the rivalry of different sects, 

 and the more, as they are all improving in information and oratori- 

 cal talent. They occasionally bear away the palm of eloquence 

 both from the bar and the deliberative assemblies. If this vast 

 moral power spends its force yet oftener on speculative subtleties 

 than on awakening emotion or influencing conduct; if it aims more 

 to teach men what to think, than how to feel or to act, this circum- 

 stance affords, perhaps, as much matter of congratulation as regret, 

 when we recollect how easy the pure, mild, and healthy influence 

 which religion might exert, and which we sometimes see it exert, 

 could be converted into bitter intolerance and the excesses of wild 

 fanaticism. 



There is yet another source of popular instruction — the periodi- 

 ca] press — which is noticed by the census as a branch of manufac- 

 turing industry, and which is exclusiuely occupied, not merely with 

 worldly affairs, but with the events of the passing hour. It keeps 

 every part of the country informed of all that has occurred in every 

 other which is likely to touch men's interests or their sympathies. 

 Nor, in attending to the vast, does it overlook the minute. Every 

 discovery in science or art, every improvement in husbandry or 

 household economy, in medicine or cosmetics, real or supposed, is 

 immediately proclaimed. Scarcely can an overgrown ox or hog 

 make its appearance on a farm, or even an extraordinary apple or 

 turnip, but their fame is heralded through the land. Here we 

 learn every legislative measure, from that which establishes a tariff 

 to that which gives a pension ; every election or appointment, from 

 a president to a postmaster ; the state of the market, the crops, and 

 the weather. Not a snow is suffered to fall, or a very hot or very 

 cold day to appear, without being recorded. We may here learn 

 w r hat every man in every city pays for his loaf or his beefsteak, 

 and what he gives, in fact, for almost all he eats, drinks, and wears. 

 Here deaths and marriages, crimes and benefactions, the pursuits of 

 business and amusement, exhibit the varied, ever-changing drama 

 of human life. Here, too, we meet with the speculations of wisdom 

 and science, the effusions of sentiment, and the sallies of wit; and 

 it is not too much to say, that the jest that has been uttered in Bos- 

 ton or Louisville is, in little more than a week, repeated in every 

 town in the United States, or that the wisdom or the pleasantry, 

 the ribaldry or the coarseness exhibited in one of the Halls of 



