112 STATEN ISLAND JOURNALISM. 



pelled tli em to tip their beavers to the public. For our part, we 

 honor the practice and willingly yield obedience to its just require- 

 ments. It is a happy thing that there is a manner to be observed m 

 coming before the public, as well as in entering the drawing-room. 

 In perusing the hebdomadary offerings of the candidate for public 

 patronage ; the eyes of the public are instinctively directed to the 

 editorial column, and the devoted wight is closely and attentively 

 watched as he goes stumbling along, hat in hand, like a reviewing 

 officer at a militia training, with all the eyes of a criticising populace 

 upon him. This is a wholesome discipline. It, at least, requires 

 moral courage as an essential in the composition of its object. 



"In a community so small as this, and so equally divided in polit- 

 ical sentiments," it is evident that a paper devoted to either of the 

 rreat political parties which now divide the people of this country, 

 could not anticipate a patronage co-extensive with the necessary ex- 

 penditures. Apart from this — if impartially considered, the so-called 

 political papers of the present day teem with such tortured and one- 

 sided statements, even of those things which fall within their especial 

 province, that the enquirer after political facts meets on every side 

 with continual reverses, which finally engender fixed disgust or blind 

 acquiescense ; and he who should have been a champion of his coun- 

 try sickens in the vain attempt to see her as she is. Thus the em- 

 pirics, who, for the most part, guide the political journals of this 

 country, are not only muddling, but poisoning those once vivifying 

 streams over which the too-confiding public have given them control. 

 And thus, in politics, as well as in science, the student is oftener 

 presented with ill-defined outlines of conflicting theories than with 

 established facts, or an} r real requital of his pains. 



" Skillful politicians cloak their deep designs, and only act with 

 openness and vigor when success is certain and applause is sure to 

 follow. Political journalists oftentime deceive themselves and 

 others, and — in the vainglorious attempts to play the general — con- 

 ceal from the 'rank and file' of their partisans all such intelligence 

 as may tend to exhibit the deformities and pregnable points of the 

 party to which they are attached. And, inasmuch as all those op- 

 posed to the sentiments of its conductors, habitually discard every- 



* The population of btaten Island, at the time of takiug Hie last census, in 18:J0, was 7.0S1. The 

 population of Westfleld exceeded that of any other town in the County. 



