vilest passions, the most depraved tastes of the most abandoned among the people, and mercenary and merciless libellers? With scarcely more than a single foul exception--and that, one regrets to say, in our Metropolis, in which are published nearly forty newspapers--can any person point out a newspaper, in town or country, indulging in, ribald or obscene language or allusions, or--with two or three exceptions--professed impiety, or slanderous attacks upon public or private character. Some year or two ago there was manifested, in a certain portion of the metropolitan press, a tendency downwards of this sort; and how long was it before popular indignation rose, and--to use a legal phrase--abated the nuisance? Can the chief perpetrator of the enormities referred to, even now, after having undergone repeated legal punishment, show himself any where in public without encountering groans and hisses, and the risk even of personal violence? And did not the occasion in question rouse the legislature itself into action, the result of which was a law effectually protecting the public against wicked newspapers, and, on the other hand, justly affording increased protection to the freedom and independence of the virtuous part of the press? I repeat the question--Who can point out more than one or two of our newspapers which are morally discreditable to the country? No censor of the press want we: the British public is its own censor. What a vast amount of humbug, of fraud, of meanness, of corruption, of oppression, of cruelty, and wickedness, as well in private as in public life--as well in low as in high places--is not kept in check, and averted from us, by the sleepless vigilance, the fearless interference, the ceaseless denunciations of our public press! 'Tis a potent preventive to check evil--or rather may be regarded as a tremendous tribunal, to which the haughtiest and fiercest among us is amenable, before which, though he may outwardly bluster, he inwardly quails, whose decrees have toppled down headlong the most exalted, into obscurity and insignificance, and left them exposed to blighting ridicule and universal derision. It is true that this power may be, and has been, abused: that good institutions and their officials have been unjustly denounced. But this is rare: the vast power above spoken of exists not, except where the press is unanimous, or pretty nearly so: and as the British people are a just and truth-loving people, (with all their weaknesses and faults,) the various organs of their various sections and parties rarely come to approach unanimity, except in behalf of a good and just cause. Let the most potent journal in the empire run counter to the feeling and opinion of the country, if we could imagine a journal so obstinate and shortsighted, and its voice is utterly ineffectual--the objects of its deadliest animosity remain unscathed, though, it may be, for a brief space exposed to the irritating and annoying consequences of publicity.