It may
be said, roughly, that while the press east of the Alleghanies has
inclined in Beecher's favor, the newspapers west of them have gone
somewhat savagely and persistently against him, and have treated
Tilton as a martyr. The cause of such a divergence of views,
considering that both Tilton and Beecher are Eastern men, is of
course somewhat obscure, but we have no doubt that it is due to a
vague feeling prevalent in the West that Tilton's cause is the
democratic one--that is, the cause of the poor, friendless man
against the rich and successful one--a feeling somewhat like that
which in England enlisted the working-classes in London on the side
of the Tichborne claimant, in defiance of all reason and evidence,
as a poor devil fighting a hard battle with the high and mighty. One
of the reporters of a Western paper which has made important
contributions to the literature of the scandal, recently accounted
for his support of Tilton by declaring that in standing by him he
was "fighting the battle of the Bohemians against Capital.
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