The first of his measures was to counteract, as much as he could, the effects of certain paragraphs that had appeared in some of the New York journals. A man of Timms’s native shrewdness had no difficulty in comprehending the more vulgar moral machinery of a daily press. Notwithstanding its ‘we’s,’ and its pretension to represent public opinion, and to protect the common interests, he thoroughly understood it was merely one mode of advancing the particular views, sustaining the personal schemes, and not unfrequently of gratifying the low malignity of a single individual; the press in America differing from that of nearly all other countries in the fact that it is not controlled by associations, and does not reflect the decisions of many minds, or contend for principles that, by their very character, have a tendency to elevate the thoughts. There are some immaterial exceptions as relates to the latter characteristic, perhaps, principally growing out of the great extra-constitutional question of slavery, that has quite unnecessarily been drawn into the discussions of the times through the excited warmth of zealots; but, as a rule, the exciting political questions that elsewhere compose the great theme of the newspapers, enlarging their views, and elevating their articles, may be regarded as settled among ourselves. In the particular case with which Timms was now required to deal, there was neither favour nor malice to counteract. The injustice, and a most cruel injustice it was, was merely in catering to a morbid desire for the marvellous in the vulgar, which might thus be turned to profit.