The press hereafter must be the principal moral, political and social influence of the country. There is no way to put it backward. It is being more and more trusted--more and more read--more and more depended upon to be equal to every emergency; and, to do it justice, it seldom disappoints expectations--a statement that cannot be made with any shadow of truth of any class of statesmen, except the very best. Years ago Lamartine was laughed at as a dreamer when he said, “Newspapers will ultimately engross all literature; there will be nothing else published but newspapers,” but Lamartine’s prophecy is being rapidly fulfilled. The newspaper is invading every department of literature, and giving the reader the best at the lowest price. There is a great hubbub once in a while in courts and among lawyers about what they are pleased to style trial by newspaper, and it is astonishing that before a court can reach any important case, the conduct of the case, its merits and its probable conclusion have been so well foreshadowed by the press that interest in the trial itself is comparatively slight. So general is the resort to newspapers for information and opinion, that a short time ago when one of the famous boodle aldermen of New York was called up for trial, it was impossible, under the jury laws of the State, to find even one single competent juror in a city the population of which was one million and a half. Everybody had formed opinions, and the opinions generally agreed. They had seen the testimony--seen it discussed from all sides and all points--discussed so clearly, that they had no reasonable doubt of the guilt of the accused. And all this they saw in the newspapers. It begins to look as if the time might come when lawyers, courts, jurors, judges, would all be supplanted by the editor, and as if soon afterward teachers and preachers also might feel occasion to shake in their shoes. There is no danger in such an event of the editor becoming conceited. He always has a regulating principle close at hand. It is right in the counting-room at the book-keeper’s desk. The public can change its opinion of a newspaper as quickly as it can of a political candidate; and when it does, the editor knows of it at once by a class of figures that never are allowed to lie.