But, though Mr Burden had become the sole importer, though his advice and that of Mr Abbott often controlled the decision of the Government in the local affairs of the M’Korio, and though his name was attached to all the few traditions of the settlement, yet the trade was very small, and, such as it was, it was dwindling. In Mr Burden’s considerable affairs, the total of this petty offshoot did not amount to one-twentieth at the most; it rarely represented a profit of £400—more commonly less than £300 in a year; and, to his natural compliance in Charles Abbott’s judgment, therefore, was added a business experience which made of the Delta something mean and paltry in his conception.
This contempt of his for the M’Korio was broken down at last by the intervention of Cosmo; but that intervention, necessary as it was in its moment, would not alone have sufficed, though without it nothing would finally have been done.
The ground had first to be prepared for the whole public and for Mr Burden as a part of that public; and the instrument of this preparation was the power which—a full year before he had met Mr Burden’s son—Mr Barnett had begun to exercise over the Press.
There is a kind of rash political indignation which we all come across, and to which some of us are attracted. There are men who hate the successful or the rich, but whose hatred is not quite dishonest, though it is wildly unjust. They see conspiracies upon every side, they scowl at every new fortune, but they do so in good faith, for they are haunted by a nightmare of Cosmopolitan Finance—pitiless, destructive of all national ideals, obscene, and eating out the heart of our European tradition. I need hardly say that this kind of hatred was roused against Mr Barnett, and gained an especial strength from the attitude which the great papers took towards what was known to be his scheme; and yet at that moment Mr Barnett, had the world known it, was comparatively poor. He had not certainly a free capital of ten thousand pounds, beyond what was locked up in his various properties and adventures.
The particular charge made against Mr Barnett was that he had “bought the Press”—or at least the London Press.
Of general and vaguer charges there were many, but they are incapable of proof, and I shall not concern myself with them. With his relations towards the Press I am well acquainted; and though it is not my business to defend Mr Barnett, yet I am so convinced that this kind of indignation proceeds solely from an ignorance of our social machinery, that it is incumbent upon me to show quite clearly how false the accusation was.
The men who made it (a salutary fear of the law of libel forbade them as a rule to put it into print), the men who made it, I say, had no other ground than this: they saw that the M’Korio Delta was in the air, they heard the name upon every side; they knew that Mr Barnett would necessarily grow rich upon its development; they saw the Press almost unanimous in its demand for that development, and they jumped to the false conclusion which I have indicated, because their vision had been warped by an uncontrolled and ill-balanced anger against the modern inequalities of fortune.
Mr Barnett had not bought the Press; the Press is not to be bought. That Mr Barnett had an influence with the Press, and a legitimate influence, I will not deny; but when I have described that influence I think my thesis will be proved.
Let us consider first what papers Mr Barnett owned. Here is the list. He was the proprietor of Little Ones, Boy’s Chatter, The Woman, The English Country Side. For some months, in the interval between the bankruptcy of Sir Charles Binsted and the formation of the Agricultural Union, he had also owned the Farmer’s Friend. It is incredible that he should have made such purchases with any object of hoodwinking public opinion. He could only have made them as an investment. The very names of the papers are sufficient proof of this.
Beyond these he was proprietor of The Review. The Review was a losing property; he had been compelled to assume direction of it in payment of a debt, and he was occupied at the date of which I speak in building it up into something of its former importance. He was also part owner (but only part owner), of the rival Holborn Review, and the editor, who had been for some time his private secretary, has assured me that Mr Barnett’s name was hardly mentioned in the office. I am confident that he took no interest whatsoever in the Holborn Review, save as a financial venture. My readers have but to turn to a file to see that arguments upon both sides were admitted to its pages, and that the M’Korio Delta, even at the height of its fame, rarely afforded matter for more than one article in each issue.