MR. DELANE.
THE Time' notice of Mr. Delano is curiously bad, consider- ing what he was to the Times ; and we are not satisfied with any of the other notices which have appeared of his career. The writers seem to us scarcely to appreciate either his force, or the unusual limitations within which that force was bound.. Few careers in the world have been more remarkable than that of Mr. Delane. The son of an attorney, who felt himself advanced when the proprietor of the Times made him financial manager of the paper, he at twenty-tour was selected, by one of those flashes of insight which have occasionally distinguished the Walter family, to be Editor of what was even then the most powerful journal in the world. Almost a boy, imperfectly educated, though on the regular Oxford lines, and with little experience outside the office, he was appointed to succeed Sterling and Barnes, and within two years it was clear that he could in efficiency surpass them both. He seemed to have no need of experience. Writers of double his age and ten times his knowledge deferred, honestly deferred, to his opinion. Cabinet Ministers not only consulted—that is common—but thoroughly trusted one who must have appeared to them an im- mature lad; and the constituency of the paper, scarcely knowing his name, manifested towards him a confidence which, except for passing moments, was never shaken. Long before he was thirty, Mr. Delane was counted by all the initiated one of the small group who govern the United Kingdom, was as powerful as any Cabinet Minister, and was trusted with every kind of political and social secret. And what was much more wonderful, nobody was ever much surprised. So strong was Delane, and sofully did he impress himself upon all political men. who came in contact with him, that no one of them all ever wondered. why he gave information to that very young man, or why he relied on his discretion, or why, if the opinion expressed were adverse, he revolved over and over again the justice of his own. England is of all countries the one most completely governed by the middle-aged, but the youth of Mr. Delano never struck any- body. ; and there was no reason why it should strike them, for from the first there was in his business intercourse with other men and with the world no Mr. Delano. There was a quiet, plain. tongued man, who told them in the clearest and most unmis- takable of English what the body of the middle-class of the United Kingdom were thinking and saying, and had in his speech something of the quiet authority of that class, their sovereignty over all departments. If Mr. Delano wrote, or rather ordered an article—for he seldom or never wrote—that article expressed this body of opinion. If he argued, his inter- locutor might be sure he was being opposed by a whole people. If he wrote, his letter had something in it of the power that comes from the innumerable hum of a nation. Mr. Delano was not a man of "literary power," or political originality, or acute political insight. He never wrote anything, he never, that we know of, suggested a measure, and he occasionally made atrocious blunders. Whenever, indeed, the English people could tell him nothing, he was as much at sea as any other man. Ho was wrong from first to last about the American Civil War, and wrong in a way that was not like him, for he never saw a truth patent to many inferior men, that whatever the merits of the quarrel, the North, which received from Europe week by week reinforcements superior to its losses, must inevitably win ; and up to the last moment he believed, or allowed his writers to believe, that Sherman's "march into space" was the signal that the North had lost the game. He did not foresee the annexation of Nice and Savoy, which so nearly changed all European history. He did not catch the feeling of the people about the French Colonels' menaces. He
did not in the least perceive the gigantic strength of Prussia; or expect the overthrow of the Austrian supremacy in Ger- many. He had, in truth, no especial insight into events which occurred, or might occur, outside Great Britain. Ho was not, in fact, on such subjects, helped by his gift, the gift which made up to him for the lack of any other qualifica- tion in which he happened to be deficient. There was something in his mental ear, some fineness of hearing, some power, which seemed now like an intellectual capacity, and now like a physical instinct, which enabled him to hear what the governing class of Great Britain were thinking about any given topic ; and he was able to supply reasons and justifica- tions for that thought which made it, when they were read, stronger and clearer than it was before. He knew the opinion of that section of the English people which then had power, and he repeated it ; and when he had repeated it, it became more definite than before. This power, which in domestic affairs scarcely ever, if ever, failed him, was the secret of his immense success as editor ; it was so great, that he could exercise it through writers other than himself, writers whom he did not always convert, and it has never, to our judgment, been satisfactorily or thoroughly explained. People say Mr. Delane took great pains, lived in many societies, talked to many people, and gauged accurately the weight of those he talked to ; and all that is true, but then it is true also of men who never have the smallest idea of what the moaning of that multitudinous brool will be. He knew, knew even the words which that formless but overwhelming voice would desire, if only it were not stricken with aphasia, to utter aloud. And he would Bay them .out with such force and distinctness, that the multi- tude heard in articulate words the echo of its own almost in- distinguishable thought, and threw it back in a volume of sound which overbore all resistance, and almost all counter-argtmient. It was a most separate and almost wonderful power, but we believe the explanation was much simpler than the world conceived. Nine times out of ten, Mr. Delane's own opinion was the opinion of the country, corrected by vast experience, and solidified by an appreciation of difficulties which, however, as will be evident to any one who reads his correspond- ence with Admiral Napier during the Crimean war, was often not more acute than that of his countrymen. Mr. Delano's mind was, in fact, a receptive one, profoundly influ- enced by the opinion of a " class,"—a phenomenon we con- stantly observe in other men, when the class does not happen to be the executive class of Great Britain. The conductors of the Guardian have exactly the same faculty,—that is, they can catch and express the opinion of moderate, but sincere Eng- lish Churchmen, exactly as Mr. Delano could the opinion of moderate, but patriotic Englishmen, the difference being the differ- ence in the force of the light reflected by the mirror. Occasionally, no doubt, the absorbing power was the result of experience, and Mr. Delane told the people their thought without sympathising with it; but nine times out of ten he was himself, when giving out his matured judgment, a representative man,—the Eng- lishman par eweellence, the Englishman embodied. There was a singular illustration of this, and we quite admit scarcely a fair one, in his habitual treatment of Ireland. When it was prudent and when it was imprudent, the Times under Mr. Delano was always the same about Ireland,—always expressed the same strong, brutal, English impatience of a people who were not satisfied with justice and prosperity, but wanted sympathy and honour, too, which the middle-class of this country, till educated by Mr. Gladstone, invariably felt, and usually acted on.
It follows, of course, from this view of his capacities, that we believe Mr. Delano to have been much more honest—intel- lectually honest, we mean—than any of his enemies or many of his friends believed him to be. As a rule, he thought, and had trained himself to think, as the English political middle-class thought—not the English political people—but we do not, of course, mean to deny that he sometimes expressed this thought without thinking it himself. He held that the Times had a separate function in the world, a great and useful function, to ex- "Imes the thought of the English better classes—not upper classes —for tlitat morning ; and if the thought was new or evanescent, he did not pa:9atly care. It ought, in his judgment, to be expressed, and he wouricl express it ; and he expressed it once or twice, it
may be, whin hie own opinion was directly the reverse, and whenqm '6hange of opinion seemed incompatible with political conviotIon of any kind. It was this belief of his and this method of action which made his opponents denounce him as a weathercock, and induced very earnest politicians, as, for instance, Mr. Cobden, to declare him utterly unprincipled. He was not, however, as we believe, unprincipled at all. He really held that he had the function of repre- senting the national mind, just as an advocate holds that he has the function of representing his client ; and if the repre- sentee happened to be guilty or in error as to his rights and liabilities, that was not the advocate's fault. That, we need not say, is not our view of the true function of journalism. The journalist is a debater, and though bound to consider and give weight to other opinions than his own, still he ought not to profess as his own, opinions to which his judgment, or, a fortiori, his conscience, are decisively opposed. But we are unable to deny that a man intellectually quite honest may hold a different view,—may think that a journalist should be either an advocate or a funnel for general opinion ; and provided that he admits his servitude, and does not affect to give as his own independent view the view he is reflecting, he may be doing useful, though not very high class work. The voice of the governing section of the people should be expressed somehow, and the paper which undertakes to express it, and to the extent of its powers does ex- press it, helps forward the political and social machinery of the State. Mr. Delane never concealed his view that this was the function of the Times, nor was there among men competent to form an opinion over any illusion as to the attitude he assumed He was, therefore, up to his lights, honest; and to that honesty he owed much of a success which was, however, mainly due to an instinctive rapport between his own mind and that of the people he represented, in their faults and virtues, as well as in the strength and limitation of their capacities. Probably no man so able was ever so little under the dominion of ideas, or so free from the charge of originality ; and in both respects he was typically English. We question, although the effort will be made, whether his place will ever be quite filled again. It requires a rare combination of qualities, and among them an independence of the influence of mere "society," which is very rare, while England is growing day by day more difficult to reflect. The old Ten-pounders thought alike, in a way the Householders do not, and were moved by a sort of rough sense, which in the wider constituency sometimes gives way to emotion, and some- times to the insight so unaccountably far-seeing, which on great questions is often manifested by vast multitudes, when momen- tarily stirred out of themselves. Even Mr. Delano could not have reflected that, and the man who could, the man who should be Mr. Delane, yet be liable to gusts of feeling, real or fictitious, exactly parallel to those which sweep over the people, has pro- bably yet to be born. The character is nearly realised in Sir William Harcourt, though ho lacks both the strength of con- viction and of prejudice in the English mind; and the next great editor of the Times, or of the journal which, if such a bouleverse- meat of the universe is possible, is to supersede the Times, will probably be of that type. We shall then look back to Mr. Delane as a great editor, who undertook to represent the country, but who was a little too convinced, a little too patriotic, a little too independent, to be quite perfect in his task.
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