Utica Morning Herald and Daily Gazette, December 14, 1860

We suppose that even the greatest apparent curses have their latent uses in the great plan of Providence. It may puzzle human wisdom to understand how partial evil results in universal good; but we must accept the axiom or impeach the Great Architect himself. We must assume that in some mysterious manner or other, plagues and pestilences, earthquakes and volcanic upheavings, venomous reptiles and devastating tempests, fleas and the dip[h]theria, op[h]thalmia and the toothache, droughts and fever-breeding miasma, hydrophobia and Upas trees, wars and famine, floods and railroad slaughters;—are but so many cogs and wheels—so many springs and shafts—in the mechanism of creation. On this theory, we charitably suppose that in the great economy of Nature, even the New York Herald has its "hidden uses." JAMES GORDON BENNETT was doubtless created for some wise purpose. Whether it was to illustrate the doctrine of total depravity, to show what Nature could do in the line of getting up a mean man, or by way of reminder to his fellow-beings of how near the human could approach the diabolic without entirely losing physical similitude to the former, will naturally remain a moot point. Perhaps, indeed, he was intended to serve as a terrible warning to those deluded mortals who cultivate the brain at the expense of the heart, and believe that wealth and position can confer respect upon a ruffian and blackguard. An editorial ISHMAEL, his hand raised against every man, and every man's hand raised against him; a social and intellectual pariah, whom society has cast from its bosom with loathing; a creature without heart and apparently without human affections; an outlaw, from whom honest men instinctively recoil; a craven, cowardly ruffian, whom the discipline of a dozen horsewhippings have failed to chasten into decency;—his name has long been a synonym for all that was venal, cowardly and abject. Grown rich by iniquitous labor, and aping respectability in his outward demeanor, he carries into old age all the vileness and venom of youth. No longer a vulgar extorter of black mail; no longer the pimp of opera houses and the terror of actors;—he exercises the same instincts in a higher, but more dangerous role. Scorning such humble game, he carries his devastations into new scenes and aims at more splendid prey.

The work to which Mr. BENNETT devotes the evening of his days—the work which he has proposed to himself as his chef d'oeuvre, and as it were, the capital to the temple of his fame—is the dissolution of the Union. On this great—and, we may say, truly national—work, he labors with the skill of an artist and the zeal of an enthusiast. Never have his great abilities shone with more dazzling splendor—never have his malignant fancies more prolifically brought forth. We cannot repress a feeling of brute admiration at the gigantic activities and exhaustless powers of this hoary-headed architect of ruin. RAPHAEL breathing the sublime passion of art upon the dull canvass, in the "Transfiguration," and MICHAEL ANGELLO seized with divine madness in the conception of the "Last judgment," are hardly more devoted apostles of art than is JAMES GORDON BENNETT, as he prossecutes his magnum opus of the destruction of the Government.

Like MILTON and other great masters, he has evidently long brooded over his theme. Hints and intimations of gestation have been thrown out from time to time for several years. But it was only on the breaking out of the JOHN BROWN raid that he formally advertised and opened his great work. The columns of his paper glowed with incendiary matter. He appealed to the frenzied passions of the South by every artifice of eloquence and logic at his command. He labored with all his might to convince the Cotton States that the Republicans were Abolitionists, had designs upon the rights and property of the South, and would carry such designs into execution the moment they obtained the power. He fabricated revolutionary documents and palmed them off upon the excited Southerners as veritable emanations from Republican leaders. He advised Virginia to arm—called upon the Cotton States to rise in defense of their rights—warned them of conspiracies hatching on every side—and did his utmost to precipitate the country into civil war.

The danger passed—the storm subsided, but the Worker kept on in the fulfilment of his mission. He labored all summer—all the fall—to poison the minds of the South—to alarm the timid and exasperate the impulsive—to manufacture a Southern public sentiment hostile to the Union and subversive of order and loyalty to the supremacy of the Federal Government.—Having accomplished this, he now endeavors to incite riots at the North, advises an assault upon a meeting soon to be held in Boston, recommends BEECHER and others to take a trip to Europe, and promises that six months hence the country "will be too hot for them!" Thus, by every appliance which a malignant fancy can suggest, he seeks to produce anarchy and ruin. The fact that such a man is permitted to grow prosperous in this life, is a tolerably strong argument in favor of future punishment.