“ Godkin shaped the lofty and independent policy of the Post and the Nation, which had a small but influential and intellectual class of readers. But as editor he had none of the personal magnetism of Greeley, for instance, and his superiority to the influence of popular feeling made Charles Dudley Warner style the Nation the “weekly judgment day.” He was an economist of the school of Mill, urged the necessity of the abstraction called “economic man,” and insisted that socialism put in practice would not improve social and economic conditions in general. ”

“ He retired from his editorial duties on the 30th of December 1899, and sketched his career in the Evening Post of that date. Although he recovered from a severe apoplectic stroke early in 1900, his health was shattered, and he died in Greenway, Devonshire, England, on the 21st of May 1902. ”