[Pg 6373] EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN (1831-) mong the men in the United States who through the agency of the press have molded intelligent public opinion, Edwin Lawrence Godkin deserves an honorable place. In the columns of the New York Nation and the New York Evening Post, he has for a generation given editorial utterance to his views upon economic, civic, political, and international questions, this work being supplemented by occasional incisive and scholarly articles in the best periodicals. His clientèle has been drawn mainly from that powerful minority which is made up of the educated, thoughtful men and women of the country. To this high function Mr. Godkin has contributed exceptional gifts and qualifications; and that in its exercise he has been a force for good, is beyond dispute. Edwin L. Godkin Born in Moyne, Ireland, in 1831, he was educated at Queen's College, Belfast. Then came the more practical education derived from a familiarity with men and things, for in early manhood he began newspaper work as war correspondent, in Turkey and the Crimea, of the London Daily News. As correspondent of this paper he came to the United States and settled here, being admitted to the New York bar in 1858. But journalism was to be his life work; and in 1865 he became the editor of The Nation, a weekly,—succeeding the Round Table, but at once taking a much more important place as a journal of political and literary discussion,—and the next year its proprietor. In 1881 he also became one of the owners and the controlling editor of the New York Evening Post, a daily, and his contributions since then have appeared in both papers, which bear to each other the relation of a daily and weekly edition. Thus he has been in active journalistic service for more than thirty years. From this slight biographical outline it may be seen that Mr. Godkin brought to the pursuit of his profession and to the study of American institutions some valuable qualifications. A college-bred man of wide experience, an adoptive American able to judge by the[Pg 6374] comparative method, a careful student of the philosophy of government, from Aristotle to Sir Henry Maine, his views combine in an unusual degree the practical and the theoretical. No doubt he has in his writings what to some will seem the defect of his quality. There is in him a certain haughtiness of temper, and what seems like impatient contempt for the opponent in argument, which, conjoined with a notable power of invective and satire in dealing with what he deems to be fallacious, are likely to arouse opposition. Hence the feeling in some quarters that Mr. Godkin is not at heart an American, but a captious critic, with sympathies ill suited to a democratic government.