THE EDITORSHIP OF THE " TIMES."
THE death of Mr. Chenery is at least as important as that of any ordinary Cabinet Minister, for it leaves vacant the Editorship of the Times ; and the Times, in spite of the radical
change which has passed over the Press, and over its own special position, is still an institution. Not that Mr. Chenery
filled the post particularly well, for in spite of the generous testimony borne to him in the Times itself, he was only an average editor, by no means up to the livel of Barnes, or Sterling, or John Delane. The Editorial chair was not, in fact, Mr. Chenery's fitting place in the world. He was an accomplished Professor or wide-minded savant, rather than a journalist. He was a scholar of unusually thorough learning in Arabic, and its most important dialect, Hebrew,—writing Hebrew, for example, with idiomatic force ; he knew that little-known subject, modern. Hebrew literature, excellently well ; he spoke two or three European tongues with ease, and he had a keen interest in all that appertains to the study of the East. He had, too, seen much of men and man- ners, had travelled in many countries, and, when interested, could throw himself with vigour into many important political questions. But, like most Orientalists, he had a difficulty in interesting himself deeply in things outside his specialty, he did not sincerely care for daily politics, and he lacked in an unusual degree insight into the movements of the English mind. He said in conversation three weeks before the election of 1880 that the return of a Liberal Government to power within twelve or fifteen years was almost an impossibility, and that the distaste for Lord Beaconsfield's Government, "in many respects well founded," was almost confined to the literary class. He was repeatedly wrong as to the English mind. about Ireland, and was, to quote a recent instance, entirely at sea as to ordinary English opinion on the Ilbert Bill. He is said to have chosen men well, or at least carefully, and he certainly made them friends ; but the Times under his man- agement failed in interestingness, and often lacked its old tone of haughty decision. Judging as outsiders compelled every day to read, and not merely to skim the Times, we should say that Mr. Chenery had a weakness for consistency most in- jurious in his special position, and that he had a nearly total inability to perceive what Englishmen would like best to read about. He gave his audience constantly two articles, and sometimes three, in a morning's issue, which were, in fact, padding, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always about trivial or unimportant subjects. That may have been judicious, for what we know, as a bit of newspaper management, and cer- tainly it was in accordance with the precedents set by the penny papers ; but it made of the Times something different from the old, strong-tongued leader of opinion, which left nothing un- touched, and tried every day, successfully or otherwise, to tell everybody what for that morning be ought, if he were not an idiot, to think. The paper became too much like every other, till the old nicknames that its enemies threw at it, "the Thruaderer," " Jupiter Tonans," and " the Oracle," became so ludicrously inappropriate that they were disused. The Times is quoted now as "the Times," just as the Standard and the Daily News are, and not as the national voice.
Mr. Chenery had little power of representation, but we do not know that this was his fault, or that any successor in his chair will ever again fully possess it. A great change has passed over the position of the Times, and it will be most difficult—if we uttered our real opinion, we should say it would be impossible—for the Walter family ever again to discover, what they have discovered so often, a man who could represent the ruling opinion of the hour with a brool as loud as its own. The first Walter did that, Barnes did that, Sterling did that, and so did Delane ; but it was under a set of circumstances, always partly accidental, which have entirely passed away. While the constituency of the Times— that is, the well-to-do class taken as a whole—ruled the Ten- pounders, and through them the kingdom, it was possible for the Times, if its conductor could reflect the opinion of that class, to utter the opinion in a regal tone, as the opinion at once of its readers and of the country. There was nothing ludicrous or even over-strained in the majesty of the tone, for the utter- ance, whatever its other merits, really was in an extraordinary degree that of the legal " country," which alone had power to act on its decisions. The United Kingdom was not governed by a democracy, but by a widely-spread oligarchy, and most of that oligarchy read the Times. All that had to be done was to gather the opinion rightly, and as all representative men were concen- trated in London, this could be accomplished with comparative ease. Mr. Barnes or Mr. Delane talked to those men, or in many cases without talking to them knew how they would think, and made their collective voice roll out through the Times in a way which, though sometimes stagey, was usually effective, and not infrequently majestic. Many singular instances of the latter tone could be quoted from the Times of 1848. This, however, can never be done again. It is no longer possible to gather the opinion of the country from representative men or Clubs, and when, with slow patience and close watchfulness and great expenditure of time, it is gathered, it is no longer the opinion of .the Times' constituency. The two powers have ceased to be identical—are, indeed, often in conflict—and the un- lucky Editor, if he follows the old tradition, finds either that his roar does not represent his constituency, and that he is, therefore, losing his hold, or that the country will go the other way, in which case his roar seems unbecomingly loud. This has really happened, though the Times would probably not believe it, about the reduction of the franchise in Ireland. The Times thundered about that quite in the old way, and we have no doubt the Editor really thought be was expressing the opinion of the country. In reality, he was only expressing that of those who buy the Times, and as the country was the other way, the thunder which twenty years ago would not only have sounded real, but have been real, caused no more alarm than the thunder of a theatre, and seemed even a little ridiculous. It could only be by chance that an Editor of the Times could ever again occupy the old position, and then, if he did, if he happened to understand both the old governing class and the new governing class, and they happened to agree, the chances are the Government would un- derstand also, and there would be no use in thundering so loud.
The Editor of the Times can, of course, be still a representa- tive man, and utter the opinion of the Middle-class, and it is well that he should do so. We have never been able to concur in the abase lavished on the Times for its tergiversations, for its constituency is always going round ; and there is no true reason why, if -only the fact is openly admitted, a newspaper should not be the mirror, instead of the leader of a constituency. But then the Editor, must avow himself representative of a class, and not of the legal nation ; must leave off confusing Income-tax payers with " the country," and must seek strength through something other than regality of mien. His post will be a difficult, perhaps even an impossible one, for an Editor of the Times who did not understand the true " country " would not guide the vessel aright ; and yet if he did understand it, he would in his own consciousness, while fighting for the opinion of his own constituency, often be waging a perfectly hope- less war. To succeed, he would have to be a man who not only understood the Upper Hundred Thousand, and in the main sympathised with them, but also understood the people, and could bear to be beaten by them, and start afresh from their verdict, without fury and without loss of heart. He must be able to be the mouthpiece of a permanently unsuccessful party, without becoming a partisan and without growing gradually into a bitter cynic. He must, in fact, be a Whig who accepts English democracy, as he accepts the English climate, without liking or disliking it, as part of the condition of things, not to be altered or endured, but simply used in the best way that seems open. Plenty of men of that kind exist—the present Foreign Secretary, we should say, is one of them—but then they usually, if journalists, want to express their own opinions; and the Editor of the Times must represent the class which supports the Times, or transmute the paper altogether. The man who can so represent, yet understand the new "country," must have a pliable firmness, a freedom from crotchets, a strong sweetness of intellectual temper which are exceedingly rare, rarest of all in the kind of men who can hold together a difficult team, and retain interest in politics which never, or hardly ever, go their way. They are scarcely to be found in France or America, and even in England, where detachment of mind is more common, despite the hereditary experience of the Walter family, who have been now seeking diligently for such men for nearly a century, we doubt if they will find the search this time an easy one. It is one thing to accept such a post when you are paid in the pleasure of ruling, quite another when the only pleasure likely to come to you is that of having defended bravely for others what you knew beforehand to be an untenable position. The next Editor of the Times, if faithful to the old tradition of the paper, will have to represent an oligarchy, yet understand a democracy, and must seem to give that oligarchy a most influential voice. That is most difficult work, to which only men with a singular combin- ation of qualities can be competent, and few such men exist in journalism.
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