CHAPTER XXXV.

CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. DELANE.

1888.
Ar. BO.

Ir was inevitable that a public man, working for a transformation
 of political opinion, should incur the hostility of
the great newspaper of the day, for the simple reason that
it has always been the avowed principle of the conductors of
that newspaper to keep very close to the political opinion of
the country in its unregenerate state. This principle it is
not our business here to discuss, but we can easily perceive
how it would come to make the newspaper sincerely inimical
 to the Manchester school. We need not resort to private
grudges to explain what is perfectly intelligible without
them.
“I remember,” said Cobden, in his speech on behalf of
Mr. Bright at Manchester in 1857, * the first time I spoke
in public after returning home from the Continent in 1847.
It was at a dinner-party in Manchester at which I took the
chair; and 1 took the opportunity of launching this question
of the press, and saying that the newspaper press of England
 was not free, and that this was a thing which the
reformers of the country ought to set about—to emancipate
it. Well, I got a most vicious article next day from the
Times newspaper for that, and the Times has followed us
both with a very ample store of venom ever singe” © Any
man,” he said on the same occasion, “ who has lived in
Speeches, ii, 77.

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