Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/403

Rh there was—save the individual concerned financially—no one to protest, or to resist the complete subjugation of what we call public opinion, which in this instance we may call public soul. Harris stands out as almost the single point of protest against conditions as they were in 1690, as opposed to conditions as they should be. He represented, as did no other man in that community at that time, the idea of rule by public opinion, as it has since developed. He represented the theory of public rights in a community that, while it was founded on the idea of liberty and public rights, still failed to realize that within itself it had created an autocracy just as hateful as the one from which it had fled.

The community had not—in fact, the world had not—grown to realize that liberty or freedom of conscience cannot be had without freedom of discussion. Harris' impotence, as well as his strength, was the fact that he represented an idea, and used an invention, that was as yet hardly developed—the printing press and the new idea of journalism.

In 1690 Harris was the sole point of contact between the great mass of people in America—a vast majority of whom did not even know that he lived—and what we call public opinion. To-day there is no section or group of the people in this country not represented in the court of public opinion; none which has not, in some form or some way, a journalistic representative in the field, battling for its proper share of attention in a democracy where the will of the people, as exercised under a constitution, is the law of the land.

What our study of this development has shown us is that a system has slowly evolved, whereby the people are given the fullest measure of control and are made, in the final analysis, the direct sponsors of the government