Give the Devil his due.
It is useless for the New York
Herald, and the
Express of that city, to be diverting their rage from the
South, by occasional pop-guns, at
Horace Greeley and
Brig. Gen. Webb.--The man in the white hat is their master, and they know it. He may be the Devil, and we are inclined to think that in everything but courage, forecast, and that ‘"princely state"’ which belongs to the fallen Majesty of Hell, he is a Devil.
A vulgar Devil, earthly and sensual, but a Devil in hardness of heart and vindictiveness of temper.
Whatever he may be, he is the master of
Brooks and
Bennett, the master of their masters, the autocrat of the
Northern press and politicians, who, one and all, march at his heels, shout when he shouts, scowl when he scowls, and dare not dissent from him in any recommendation of any devilish deed, murder, arson, housebreaking, or rape, which he chooses to recommend.
We must do these captured conservative editors, who belong to
Greeley, who are the prey of his bow and spear, who follow him as meekly and submissively as over did oriental captives a Roman triumph, the credit to say that more pretentious persons than themselves are captives behind the same victorious car. At the tail of the
White Hat comes a long list of celebrities that it gives us curious sensations to look upon.
Has the Day of Judgment,--we ask it with reverence,--begun to dawn, that already the secrets of so many hearts are beginning to be revealed?
Look at
Millard Fillmore, who, a few months since, declared that the
North, in the event of an attempt in the
South to rule the
North by a sectional Administration, as the
North has attempted to rule the
South, would never submit to it,--look at him, holding up the coat tails of the Man in the
White Hat, and shouting Hurrah, and let loose the dogs of War. Behold the rhetorical
Everett, full of courtly grace and suavity, swinging his hat with measured grace in the same captive column.
Fernando Wood,
Ex-Senator Dickerson, Duello,
Stockton,
Caleb Cushing, and we know not how many more, marshalling their solid ranks in the same august procession!
Did ever White Hat before have such a following?
Here is a fellow, absolutely as green in many respects as his native hills of
Vermont, who has no pretensions to statesmanship, common sense, or anything that is practical in the whole range of human thought and action, who has blown away upon his one idea bugle with such immense force and amazing pertinacity that every hill-side is full of answering echoes, and old mountain gorges, that ought to disdain to reverberate anything but the roar of a lion or the solemn thunders of Heaven, give back the squeals of this Yankee horn, with as much promptness and fidelity, as if it were the blast of Gabriel's trumpet!
We have, therefore, no sympathy with the puling and puerile pettishness of
Bennett,
Brooks & Co., at anything their master and captain may say or do. More influential men than themselves walk with docility and alacrity in his footsteps.
At first we felt sad, and, ‘"albeit, unused to the melting mood,"’ were almost ready to shed tears over the metamorphosis exhibited by our old friends,
Fillmore.
Dickinson,
Cass,
Everett,
Douglas,
Wood,
Gushing & Co. Never, since Nebuchadnezzar went on all fours and grazed with the oxen, has the world seen such a degrading transformation.
But, on the whole, we concluded it was about as philosophical to laugh as to cry, and there was something ludicrous in seeing these ‘"solid men"’ of the
North, these portly old silver greys, with their dignified rotundity, heavy watch chains, gold-headed canes, and countenances of portentous importance, scrambling, running and turning somersaults, to see which should get nearest to the coat-tails of
Horace Greeley. We have always had a shrewd suspicion that ‘"solid men,"’ in general, are the most ‘"solid humbugs"’ on the face of this humbugging world, and are mostly that kind of character known in the
Saviour's day as Scribes — Pharisees — hypocrites,--to whom he addressed those awful words--‘"Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?"’--Recent events have not tended to weaken that opinion.
We will, therefore, stick to our text, and recommend the
Brooks, the Bennetts, and others of the New York press, to give the Devil his due, and to recollect that they have enlisted under a master who knows what to do with mutineers.
The only newspaper now in New York, or in the
North, is the New York
Tribune.
All the money
Bennett has spent to make his
Herald the
Times of
America, might as well, so far as that object is concerned, have been sunk in the
Atlantic.
All the libidinous entertainments from the days of
Helen Jewett, with which for twenty-five years he has debauched society, until the moral stench of New York rises to Heaven like the foul clouds that drew down avenging fires upon
Sodom, all these have failed to secure him the coveted reward of his prostitution.
The Devil has swindled him even worse than he has swindled the public.
The
Herald is not the original, vigorous, dominant journal of New York.
That
Journal is the
Tribune. That press is the incarnation of
Puritan ideas, habits, philosophy, fanaticism, sensuality, selfishness and cruelty, whilst the
Herald is but a miserable imitation.
Even
Brigadier-General Webb is more respectable in the eyes of the
South now than
James Gordon Bennett.--
Webb is only a fool.
Let
Greeley attend at once to
Bennett, and stop the grimaces he is making at himself and his
Lieutenant.
