To us, the judgments of your newspapers on such themes seem generally to have been crude and flippant, as well as deeply tinctured with prejudice and bitterness.

In so far as they may be taken as expressing public opinion, they give an unfavorable impression of the popular intelligence, while so far as they may have formed public opinion, the nation was not to be felicitated.

Nowadays, when a citizen desires to make a serious impression upon the public mind as to any aspect of public affairs, he comes out with a book or pamphlet, published as other books are.

But this is not because we lack newspapers and magazines, or that they lack the most absolute freedom.
The newspaper press is organized so as to be a more perfect expression of public opinion than it possibly could be in your day, when private capital controlled and managed it primarily as a money-making business, and secondarily only as a mouthpiece for the people." "But," said I, "if the government prints the papers at the public expense, how can it fail to control their policy?
Who appoints the editors, if not the government ?" "The government does not pay the expense of the papers, nor appoint their editors, nor in any way exert the slightest influence on their policy," replied Dr.Leete.

"The people who take the paper pay the expense of its publication, choose its editor, and remove him when unsatisfactory.