Mr. O'Flynn, editor of the _Weekly Warwhoop_, whose white slave I now found
myself, was, I am afraid, a pretty faithful specimen of that class, as it
existed before the bitter lesson of the 10th of April brought the Chartist
working men and the Chartist press to their senses. Thereon sprang up a
new race of papers, whose moral tone, whatever may be thought of their
political or doctrinal opinions, was certainly not inferior to that of the
Whig and Tory press. The _Commonwealth_, the _Standard of Freedom_, the
_Plain Speaker_, were reprobates, if to be a Chartist is to be a reprobate:
but none except the most one-sided bigots could deny them the praise of
a stern morality and a lofty earnestness, a hatred of evil and a craving
after good, which would often put to shame many a paper among the oracles
of Belgravia and Exeter Hall. But those were the days of lubricity and
O'Flynn. Not that the man was an unredeemed scoundrel. He was no more
profligate, either in his literary or his private morals, than many a man
who earns his hundreds, sometimes his thousands, a year, by prophesying
smooth things to Mammon, crying in daily leaders "Peace! peace!" when
there is no peace, and daubing the rotten walls of careless luxury and
self-satisfied covetousness with the untempered mortar of party statistics
and garbled foreign news--till "the storm shall fall, and the breaking
thereof cometh suddenly in an instant.
Pages:
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509