Why America has no Comic Papers.

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thrives on bad spelling. The editor of the Tribune despises a pun, and would strike the Wilmington (N. C.) Commercial from his exchange list for the following perpetration on the newspapers of Philadelphia:

As an Item of news, and for the benefit of an Inquirer, we Herald the fact that a man seen one Day this week with a Bullet-in his hand, and a Telegraph on a Post in his hat. Putting a Bee in his pocket, he Press-ed, and saw Stars before he reached home. The man was a North American. We did not know his Age, but the Ledger will doubtless Record it when he dies.

Mr. Bennett, of the Herald, had a keen appreciation of wit, but was utterly opposed to puns. One day, at the dinner-table, in a general conversation on poets, one gentleman expressed great admiration for Beranger. "Yes, yes," said Mr. Bennett, "I admit all you say, but I think Burns has more fire than Beranger." "Why," said a gentleman present, "I thought, Mr. Bennett, you detested puns." "So I do," said Mr. Bennett. "But you just uttered one." "I did!" with a look of surprise. "Why, yes; you said that Burns had more fire than Beranger." He gracefully submitted that it was without prepense.

These are the reasons why no comic paper prospers in the United States. Our wit finds vent in the daily newspapers. Where wit is so spontaneous a production, it must be gathered at once or it is lost. We do not live on the article. No one can thrive on Champagne alone. We take it with other wines, and with other mental food and drink. Our four or five thousand daily and weekly publications have columns of " Nuts to Crack," "Sunbeams," "Sparks from the Telegraph," "Freshest Gleanings," "Odds and Ends," "News Sprinklings," "Flashes of Fun," "Random Readings," "Mere Mentions," "Humor of the Day," "Quaint Sayings," "Current Notes," "Things in General," "Brevities," "Witticisms," "Notes of the Day," "Jottings," "All Sorts," " Editor's Drawer," "Sparks," "Fun and Folly," "Fact and Fiction," "Twinklings."

These are the daily dishes set before our sovereigns. They are the comic departments of the regular Press. We need not count the names of our wits and humorists on the ends of our fingers. It is not necessary to say, "There is Hood, or Douglas Jerrold, or Hook, or Leitch, or Cruikshanks, or Mark Lemon." They are not here in separate and distinct form, even if we do hear of Bret Harte, and Davenport, and Artemus Ward, and Mark Twain. We are a nation full of such characters, perhaps a little thin here and there, but always in abundance and in good humor. They are present on every festive occasion. Our greatest patriot, during the recent gigantic rebellion, with the cares of state on his shoulders, was overflowing with genial stories, and apt humorous anecdotes, and keen. illustrations. We are, in a sentence, like the modern hero who

could dive deeper, swim farther, and come out drier than Leonidas, or any other man. Hence wit can not thrive here as a specialty. Hence the failure of the Carpet Bag, Punch and Judy, Vanity Fair, Charivari, Fun, Picayune, Lantern, Yankee Doodle, Phunny Phellow, and Punchinello, common names on both sides of the Atlantic, with all the brilliant flashes of Brougham and Halpine, or the striking sketches of M'Lellan, Bellew, Nast, and Morgan.

Our actions,

Our wit, as we have said, goes into all the papers. our talk, our reading, our journals, our trade, our labor, our politics, our religion, must be spiced with it. All we do has its point. Our Attic salt, indeed, seasons every thing except our cooking. There, as the amiable Frenchman said, we have but one gravy for a hundred dishes.

The Press in Congress.

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CHAPTER XLV.

THE PRESS IN CONGRESS.

JOURNALISTS IN THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

-NEWSPA- REPRESENTATIVES IN THE NATIONAL CAPITAL.-THE TWO CON

PERS.
GRESSES.

THERE are two Congresses in the United States. One sits in the national Capitol in Washington periodically, and makes and unmakes laws; the other sits en permanence in newspaper offices in every city and important town in the nation. They are both deliberative in their character. They are both potential. One Congress is composed of members elected by the people, but can only be heard by their constituents outside the walls of the Capitol by the aid of the other Congress. The members of the first-named talk to each other, often abuse each other, air their ideas and their vanity, enact laws, impose taxes, and make war. They appear before the great public audience like actors on the stage, perform their part, and disappear. The other Congress is larger in numbers and more independent in character. It talks all the time. It is an incessant babbler. It watches public men and public events. It warns the people of approaching danger. It takes large sums of money from the people, but gives something in return. Instead of imposing taxes, it does all in its power to reduce them. It curbs licentiousness in public places. It is the palladium of the people's rights.

What are these two Congresses called? One is the Senate and House of Representatives, and the other the Press of the United States.

These two important branches of the public service are more largely intermixed than one would suppose without an investigation. But, while one is greatly dependent upon the other in order to reach the public eye and the public mind, the Press happily is entirely independent of Congress. In times past the criticisms of the journalist would frequently cause members of the Senate and House to rise to a "question of privilege," under the mistaken idea that the national Congress was superior to the popular Congress; and sometimes these "questions of privilege" have resulted in “satisfaction elsewhere," or "outside of these walls," as in the case of Cilley and Webb, and Rust and Greeley.

While John Walter, the principal proprietor of the London Times,

ignores in a deliberate speech his journalistic responsibility in the House of Commons, Henry B. Anthony, of the Providence Journal, Horace Greeley, of the New York Tribune, Henry J. Raymond, of the New York Times, and James Brooks, of the New York Express, assert theirs in the Senate and House of Representatives without fear or favor. In 1835, Mr. Roebuck, in his political pamphlets, denounced in no measured terms the nameless writers, mentioning the two master-minds of the London Times at that time-Edward Sterling and Thomas Barnes-the two men whose slashing and able articles gave the title of "Thunderer" to that journal. Mr. Roebuck said that he "was in the habit of meeting Mr. Sterling in society, and was not a little amused by the charlatan game he played to hide his editorship of the Times. If any one had assumed the fact he would have taken it as an affront. Often has it been whispered in my hearing, 'That is the editor of the Times; but hush! he will hear us.' 'Well, and what then?' 'What then? He will abuse us, to be sure."" When this publication appeared, Captain Sterling sent a message to Mr. Roebuck by his friend, Colonel Campbell, in which he said, “I have never been, technically or morally, connected in any manner with the editorship of the Times, not possessing over the course or choice of its politics any power or influence whatever, nor, by consequence, being responsible for its acts," whereupon Mr. Roebuck withdrew the language complained of. Yet, in the face of these statements, there appeared in Carlyle's "Life of John Sterling" two letters which passed between Sir Robert Peel and Edward Sterling in the same year, 1835, in which the latter acknowledges the receipt of a high compliment paid him as editor of the Times by that distinguished statesman for disinterested services rendered the government of Sir Robert Peel only a few months previous to this affair with Mr. Roebuck.

What is the connection between these powers in France? Sir Henry Bulwer thus described the manner of editing a leading journal in Paris in the time of Louis Philippe :

If you went to the French opera and saw a very large and very brilliant boxrather larger and more brilliant than any other-whose would you suppose it to be? The king's? no; a minister's? no; an embassador's? no; a French peer's? a deputy's? Guess again. That box is the Temps newspaper's! What! a newspaper have a box at the opera? To be sure; that box is where the newspaper does the greatest part of its business. You see that fat, smooth-faced little gentleman, and that tall, thin, pale figure in spectacles-one was a great man a little time ago, and the other expects to be a great man soon. The editor is giving these statesmen an audience. They tell him their views; he listens. They tell him the strength of their party; he takes a note. They tell him what course they mean to pursue; he proffers advice. The editor is a clever man. This is his way of conducting his journal. He pretends that to influence the politics of the day; and, indeed, to know the politics of the day, he must know the political men of the day. He makes his paper the organ of a party, and he makes himself the head of the party. But how to keep this party together? He used to give dinners—

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he now takes an opera box. I do not know any thing that better paints the character of the French, or the stand of France, than the journalist at the head of his political party assembled in a box at the opera.

This is the status in each country of the power and influence of the newspaper in the three great nations of the world.

In the Congressional Directory of the Forty-first Congress, published in 1869, and compiled with great care by Ben. Perley Poore, an old journalist, we find some very interesting facts of the intermixture of these two estates in the National Assembly. It is our purpose to take from this catalogue a list of the journalists connected with Congress, and to show what they are and what they have been. It is curious to see, in the mutations of life and trade, in the changes of professions, the effect on the minds of individuals when they are responsible editors and when they are mere politicians.

Here is our array of Congressional journalists. Every Congressional Directory embraces more or less of editors. They have always done much as leaven for the whole body. In the future the Newspaper Press will be more largely represented in the legislative halls of the nation:

THE JOURNALISTIC MEMBERS OF CONGRESS.

CALIFORNIA.-Eugene Casserly, Senator, connected with the Press in New York for five years. He began as a reporter; afterwards, in 1850–1, published a daily paper in San Francisco.

INDIANA. Jasper Packard, Representative, edited the Laporte Union in 1856–7. IOWA.-Frank W. Palmer, Representative, editor of Jamestown (N.Y.) Journal in 1848, editor of the Dubuque Daily Times in 1858, and editor of the Iowa State Register from 1861 to 1868.

KANSAS.-Edmund G. Ross, Senator, was foreman of the Milwaukee Sentinel, and became editor of the Kansas Tribune, the only Free State paper in that Territory at that time, all the others having been destroyed.

Sidney Clarke, Representative, published the Southbridge Press in Massachu

setts.

MAINE.-James G. Blaine, Speaker of the House, was editor of the Portland Advertiser and Kennebec Journal.

MASSACHUSETTS.-Henry Wilson, Senator, edited the Boston Republican. Nathaniel P. Banks, Representative, was a newspaper editor prior to 1849. Henry L. Dawes, Representative, edited the Greenville Gazette and Adams Transcript.

MISSOURI.-Carl Schurz, Senator, edited a revolutionary paper in Cologne in 1848. He was the Washington correspondent of the New York Tribune in 1865 and 1866; afterwards he was connected with the Press of Detroit and St. Louis. Joel F. Asper, Representative, edited the Western Reserve Chronicle in 1849, and the Chardon Democrat in 1850. In 1866 he commenced the publication of the Chillicothe Spectator.

NEVADA. Thomas Fitch, Representative, was local editor of the Milwaukee Free Democrat in 1859-60; afterwards edited the San Francisco Times and Placerville Republican.

NEW YORK.-Henry A. Reeves, Representative, editor of the Greenport (N.Y.) Republican Watchman since 1858.

Samuel Sullivan Cox, Representative, owned and edited the Columbus Ohio Statesman in 1853-4, and has been a constant contributor to the Press.

James Brooks, Representative, has been a newspaper correspondent in Washington and in Europe, an editor of the Portland Advertiser, and is now the chief editor of the New York Express.