And these reforms will be brought about quietly, yet with a firm and vigorous hand, and in a manner that will show to the world our determination henceforth to leave no loophole for the entrance of the destroyer. No race of _thinkers_ can ever be enslaved. Hitherto we have been too unreflecting, too much governed by momentary impulses, too much carried away by party cries and unhealthy enthusiasm, and hence completely beneath the sway of designing demagogues. We have left the politicians to do our thinking for us, and accepted too unhesitatingly their interested dicta as our rules of political action. The press has hitherto led the people, and so mighty an engine of political power has been eagerly seized and controlled by party leaders as a means of accomplishing their ends. All this will be done away with. We shall do our thinking for ourselves, and those who shall hereafter be put forward as the prominent actors upon the great stage of politics will become, what they have never before been save in name, the servants of the people. The press of America, like that of England, must hereafter follow, not lead, the sentiments of the nation. And while true 'freedom of the press' will be religiously conserved, that unrestrained license which has always too much characterized it will be restrained and brought within its true limits, not by statutes or brute force, but by the much more powerful agency of public opinion--by the danger of tampering with the cherished and elevated sentiments of the reading masses.