There are men in Boston, some rich, some poor, old and young, who are free from this reproach; men that have a well-proportioned love of money, and make the pursuit thereof an effort for all the noble qualities of a man. I know some such men, not very numerous anywhere, men who show that the common business of life is the place to mature great virtues in; that the pursuit of wealth, successful or not, need hinder the growth of no excellence, but may promote all manly life. Such men stand here as violets among the cabbages, making a fragrance and a loveliness all their own; attractive anywhere, but marvellous in such a neighborhood as that.
Look next on the morals of Boston, as indicated by the Newspapers, the daily and the weekly press. Take the whole newspaper literature of Boston, cheap and costly, good and bad, study it all as a whole, and by the inductive method construct the ethics of the press, and here you find no signs of a higher morality in general than you found in trade. It is the same centre about which all things gravitate here as there. But in the newspapers the want of great principles is more obvious, and more severely felt than in trade--the want of justice, of truth, of humanity, of sympathy with man. In trade you meet with signs of great power; the highway of commerce bears marks of giant feet. Our newspapers seem chiefly in the hands of little men, whose cunning is in a large ratio to their wisdom or their justice. You find here little ability, little sound learning, little wise political economy; of lofty morals almost nothing at all. Here, also, the dollar is both Pope and King; right and truth are vassals, not much esteemed, nor over-often called to pay service to their Lord, who has other soldiers with more pliant neck and knee.
A newspaper is an instrument of great importance; all men read it; many read nothing else; some it serves as reason and conscience too: in lack of better, why not? It speaks to thousands every day on matters of great moment--on matters of morals, of politics, of finance. It relates daily the occurrences of our land, and of all the world. All men are affected by it; hindered or helped. To many a man his morning paper represents more reality than his morning prayer. There are many in a community like this who do not know what to say--I do not mean what to think, thoughtful men know what to think--about any thing till somebody tells them; yet they must talk, for "the mouth goes always." To such a man a newspaper is invaluable; as the idolater in the Judges had "a Levite to his priest," so he has a newspaper to his reason or his conscience, and can talk to the day's end. An able and humane newspaper would get this class of persons into good habits of speech, and do them a service, inasmuch as good habits of speech are better than bad.