THE ADVERTISEMENT.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 529, 8 June 1869, Page 4

THE ADVERTISEMENT.

(From "Fraser's Magazine.") The' advertisement can sell millions of yards of shoddy for honest broadcloth ! The advertisement can import millions of chests of tea direct from China, and sell cheaper than sloe-leaves and carpet-sweep-ings ! The advertisement can bring millions of tons of all Wallsend coals from Newcastle to London, and let the Cockneys burn them at no more cost than Welsh, Midland, or Anthracite ! The advertisement can supply millions upon millions of miscellaneous articles, from halfpenny toj's and cheap Jacks, to newbuilt houses and shiploads of invaluable merchandise, all of the first-rate class, and at an incredible reduction of price ! The advertisement can not only import millions of bales of the finest Georgian cotton, but change millions of bales of other cotton into Island, and by its sheer strength, aided by its dexterity, pass the whole, in a manufactured state, into alpaca, flax, wool, silk, or other produce, and by its simple process, at the enhanced cost of far more expensive fabrics ! The advertisement can cleanse the Augean stable of millions of boxes and bottles of quack medicine, and induce millions of fools to anoint their bodies with, or swallow their contents ! The advertisement can make as many fools believe that spurious aud adulterated concoctions of hardly less poisonous trash — unhealthy, nasty, and injurious materials of every sort contributive to imposition — are really generous wines, neat as imported (and that, too, come to be a taxing pull), and of genuine spirits and beer, from the vine, sugar-cane, and John Barleycorn, to be drunk on the premises or anywhere else, con gusto, accordingly. The advertisement can carry under its ostensibly

feeble little arms, thousands of miles of railroad, with tens of thousands of passengers and prodigious traffic, by means of common, fast, and pleasure trains, about to realize enormous profits ; and, admirable to relate for its care and humanity, never having been known to Avound seriously or to kill even one of the well assured multitude who trust their lives to consequences so satisfactorily accredited. The advertisement can bear the entire burden of hundreds of bubble companies, with many millions of (their) capital, resting solely on its veracity and responsibility. The advertisement is equally stoxit in the support it can afford to foreign loans ; for examples, see its Archimedean capacity in the Greek, and its Herculean vigor in the country where one of Hercules' pillars is reported to be still standing. The advertisement can lend millions of money (flash) at once on mere personal security, without inconvenient inquiries or references on either side, at almost nominal interest, without expenses, and repayable by instalments at pleasure, &c. The weight of the nuggets (query, called ingots ? of old) is not so very ponderous, but there is a good deal to stoop under so as to gull hundreds of thousands of idiots into disastrous loss or litter ruin. The advertisement can keep up, for hundreds of nights without intermission, the heaviest tomfoolery and outrageous performances at the theatres (though amenable to fall by every law of gravitation), as if they were light and entertaining, instead of not being worth an old song. The advertisement can support and circulate tenfold more matchless magazines and periodicals, good, bad, and indifferent, than could find existence but for its mighty help ; and as for sensationalism, spiritualism, ritualism, political associations, monster meetings, nonsense, trash, rubbish, imposture, and poison of every possible kind, millions of reams of paper are inadequate to demonstrate its infinite capability. The advertisemeut can maintain the greatest manufacturers in the world as original dispensers of intelligence and useful knowledge ; thousands of semi-professors, lecturers, and professionals, en masse, retailing superfluousnothingstoignorantaudiences; inspired writers for the press, and millions of other classes of retail dealers laden with every article of want or luxury in life and society— and all " guaranteed" — just as affirmatively and with as free a conscience as if the whole were the very truth, and simple matter of course.