ROOT AND BRANCH

"'I'll be judge; I'll be jury', said cunning old Fury;" and the council of the city of Boston has followed the precedent. The Trustees of the Public Library have been cordially invited to attend the next meeting of the city fathers--in the capacity of counsel for the defense--of Webster's Dictionary, so that they may duly show cause, if any, for the retention of said dictionary upon the shelves of the above-mentioned library.

So are the mighty fallen; but it is at least right and fitting that Boston should take the lead in suppressing an iniquitous volume whose definitions do violence to the New England conceptions of liberty and the Constitution. Right bravely has the more or less permanent advisory or legislative body, as that flippant Webster has it, the city council of Boston, stepped to the defence of its hearth fires and homes by snatching from the nation's youth a plaything far more dangerous than a noxious rattle.

More than fitting it is, moreover, that Boston should be the first to condemn and banish the labours of its own sons in order that the homes of those sturdy descendants of the Puritans, -- the O'Rourkes, the Flahertys and the O'Houlihans,--may be kept inviolate even as that stern-eyed Roman, the elder Brutus, sentenced to death his own son for treachery to the state.

To the rest of the country perhaps it may seem absurd to bar a standard work like Webster; but New England as a whole and Boston in particular have a reputation to sustain. Law and Order, Liberty, and the Constitution have always found staunch support in the much maligned New England conscience. Other states may continue in their sordid ruts interpreting and tampering with the old traditions to suit their shifting advantages, but not so Massachusetts. Webster's is dangerous; the edict has gone forth; let it be abolished, even tho this mean Funk and Wagnall's, phonetic spelling and a thoro reconstruction of the language thruout the land. What matters while the old stock lasts.