greatness and glory of the republic, but holding to no other article of faith as essential to political salvation."[1]
Coming when he did, Godkin was a tonic as well as an irritant. One of the causes of irritation among those who had to contend with him in editorial debate was the fact that he was a foreigner, but this, as Bryce says, gave him detachment and perspective. It is for the great ability that he had and for his great influence on the younger minds, his influence against corruption and for honesty and culture, that the country must be grateful.
"His finished criticism," says Bryce, "his exact method, his incisive handling of economic problems, his complete detachment from party, helped to form a new school of journalists, as the example he set of a serious and lofty conception of an editor's duties helped to add dignity to the position. He had not that disposition to enthrone the press which made a great English newspaper once claim for itself that it discharged in the modern world the functions of the mediaeval Church. But he brought to his work as an anonymous writer a sense of responsibillty and a zeal for the welfare of his country which no minister of State could have surpassed.
"His friends may sometimes have wished that he had more fully recognized the worth of sentiment as a motive power in politics, that he had more frequently tried to persuade as well as to convince, that he had given more credit for partial installments of honest service and for a virtue less than perfect, that he had dealt more leniently with the faults of the good and the follies of the wise. Defects in these respects were the almost inevitable defects of his admirable qualities, of his passion for truth, his hatred of wrong and injustice, his clear vision, his indomitable spirit.
- ↑ Rhodes, 287.
