James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

[268] at ‘labor-saving plans’ of cooking, washing, schooling, &c., is rather deplorable than surprising. Were he some poor day-laborer, subsisting his family and paying rent on the dollar a day he could get when the weather permitted and some employer's necessity or caprice gave him a chance to earn it, we believe he would view the subject differently. As to the spirit which can denounce by wholesale all who labor, in behalf of a Social Reform, in defiance of general obloquy, rooted prejudice, and necessarily serious personal sacrifices, as enemies of Christianity and Good Morals, and call upon the public to starve them into silence, does it not merit the rebuke and loathing of every generous mind? Heaven aid us to imitate, though afar off, that Divinest charity which could say for its persecutors and murderers, “ Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

...

We are profoundly conscious that the moral tone and bearing of the Press fall very far beneath their true standard, and that it too often panders to popular appetites and prejudices when it should rather withstand and labor to correct them. We, for example, remember having wasted many precious columns of this paper, whereby great good might have been done, in the publication of a controversy on the question, “Can there be a church without a Bishop?” —a controversy unprofitable in its subject, verbose and pointless in its logic, and disgraceful to our common Christianity in its exhibitions of uncharitable temper and gladiatorial tactics. The Rev. Dr. Potts may also remember that controversy. We ask the Pulpit to strengthen our own fallible resolution never to be tempted by any hope of pecuniary profit, (pretty sure to be delusive, as it ought,) into meddling with such another discreditable performance.

We do not find, in the Courier's report of this sermon, any censures upon that very large and popularly respectable class of journals which regularly hire out their columns, Editorial and Advertising, for the enticement of their readers to visit grogeries, theatres, horse-races, as we sometimes have thoughtlessly done, but hope never, unless through deplored inadvertence, to do again. The difficulty of entirely resisting all temptations to these lucrative vices is so great, and the temptations themselves so incessant, while the moral mischief thence accruing is so vast and palpable, that we can hardly think the Rev. Dr. slurred over the point, while we can very well imagine that his respected disciple and reporter did so. At this moment, when the great battle of Temperance against Liquid Poison and its horrible sorceries is convulsing our State, and its issue trembles in the balance, it seems truly incredible that a Doctor of Divinity, lecturing on the iniquities of the Press, can have altogether overlooked this topic. Cannot the Courier from its reporter's notes supply the omission.?

Provocation.

An advertisement offering a prize of fifty dollars for the best.