The Daily Dispatch: August 27, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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Canadian opinion of Newspaper Mobbing

This is not only an exceedingly foolish way of proceeding — it not only insures its own punishment by encouraging a race of journalists who will never speak the truth, except when likely to please, but it does more than almost anything else to lower the American people in the estimation of all civilized nations. We care not what the destroyed journals published. If treasonable matter, then the writers ought to be punished in the due course of law and not by a mob. But if the matter was not treasonable, but only false and venturous, then its undisturbed publication ought to have been permitted. Its suppression by violence is a proof that in Concord and Bangor at least, freedom of opinion does not exist; and the complacency with which the act generally appears to be regarded would perhaps justify us in believing that other and more extended localities are equally unfortunate. Those who have anything to lose in the United States cannot remember too soon that when the mob's idea respecting the rights of meum and get confused, mistakes are likely to be made with property more valuable than that usually contained in newspaper offices. At the present time especially, the assumption of power by illegally constituted tribunal ought to be sternly checked, or the great Republic will be resolved into a chaos from which there is no return, except by the ‘"purchase of order at the expense of liberty."’ --Toronto Globe.