He Bore The Affliction Very
Philosophically, And All His Well Days He Spent With Us.
One day my husband was absent, having accompanied Mr. S - - to
inspect a farm, which he afterwards purchased, and I had to get
through the long day at the inn in the best manner I could.
The
local papers were soon exhausted. At that period they possessed
little or no interest for me. I was astonished and disgusted at the
abusive manner in which they were written, the freedom of the press
being enjoyed to an extent in this province unknown in more
civilised communities.
Men, in Canada, may call one another rogues and miscreants, in the
most approved Billingsgate, through the medium of the newspapers,
which are a sort of safety-valve to let off all the bad feelings
and malignant passions floating through the country, without any
dread of the horsewhip. Hence it is the commonest thing in the
world to hear one editor abusing, like a pickpocket, an opposition
brother; calling him a reptile - a crawling thing - a calumniator - a
hired vendor of lies; and his paper a smut-machine - a vile engine
of corruption, as base and degraded as the proprietor, &c. Of this
description was the paper I now held in my hand, which had the
impudence to style itself the Reformer - not of morals or manners,
certainly, if one might judge by the vulgar abuse that defiled
every page of the precious document. I soon flung it from me,
thinking it worthy of the fate of many a better production in
the olden times, that of being burned by the common hangman;
but, happily, the office of hangman has become obsolete in Canada,
and the editors of these refined journals may go on abusing their
betters with impunity.
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