The Evening Post: A Century of JournalismNevins, Allan
History
The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism
Nevins, Allan
New York post
Mr. Tallmadge has done well in vindicating the right of individuals
to address Congress on any matter within its province.... This is
something, at a time when the Governor of one State demands of
another that free discussion on a particular subject shall be made
a crime by law, and when a Senator of the Republic, and a pretended
champion of liberty, rises in his place and proposes a censorship
of the press more servile, more tyrannical, more arbitrary, than
subsists in any other country. It is a prudent counsel also that
Mr. Tallmadge gives to the South--to beware of increasing the
zeal, of swelling the ranks and multiplying the friends, of the
Abolitionists by attempting to exclude them from the common rights
of citizens.... Yet it seems to us that Mr. Tallmadge ... might
have gone a little further. It seems to us that ... he should
have protested with somewhat more energy and zeal against the
attempt to shackle the expression of opinion. It is no time to
use honeyed words when the liberty of speech is endangered....
If the tyrannical doctrines and measures of Mr. Calhoun can be
carried into effect, there is an end to liberty in this country;
but carried into effect they cannot be. It is too late an age to
copy the policy of Henry VIII; we lie too far in the occident to
imitate the despotic rule of Austria. The spirit of our people has
been too long accustomed to freedom to bear the restraint which is
sought to be put upon it. Discussion will be like the Greek fire,
which blazed the fiercer for the water thrown upon it; and if the
stake be set and the faggots ready, there will be candidates for
martyrdom.
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