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in resisting the subpoena which would have placed him in the hands of the
Washington ring, he said:
... It is not alone because it saves us money; it is not alone because it saves us from unlawful imprisonment.
Both these dangers we might easily have shunned by declining to print any exposure of the rascalities at Washington.
We knowingly and considerately risked our purse and person in laying before the public the malversations in office which were costing the people right heavily.
The powers that be made strenuous efforts by perversion of the authority of the court, and abuse of its process, to lay hands upon us. Under these circumstances our chivalric brethren of the press have made our cause their own, and the cause of the country.
The journals which have stood with us foremost in the front rank, the Times, Tribune, Evening Post, and Herald, in resisting the advance of tyranny, to our dying day we can never forget.
And so the press rises to the comprehension and assertion of its own dignity and power.
And all petty and despicable jealousies and rivalries are buried deep in the strong current of the brotherhood of the press — the brotherhood representation of the rights of the people!
No newspaper office in the country should be unadorned by the portrait of the independent judge who, in the straight path of judicial duty, has done so much for popular rights.
The name of Blatchford should henceforth become a household word, and never be forgotten. ...
But this was not all that
Dana had to say on that subject.
While he felt deeply the necessity for cleaning out the rings which were preying upon the substance of the people, he asked, August 18th:
... Would it not be a fatal mistake if, in order to execute justice upon some great public robber like Tweed, we should overturn and destroy those defences of liberty that have cost so much to erect, and whose worth and wisdom centuries of experience have justified?
